ricardocabellov5.5

Since I moved to Linux, one of the major frustrations was the lack of a decent Subversion client. I have tried many different clients during my time on Windows and on MacOS. My favourite from all of them, by far, was TortoiseSVN.

I've been using both RapidSVN and Eclipse's Subversive on Linux. I can't even begin to think how much time I have spent trying to fix corrupted folders and having to recursively remove ".svn" folders and copy on top of a clean checkout... I even considered stopping using SVN as such a bad experience made me feel SVN was a waste of time.

I don't know why, I though about searching for options again. You know, a new app that changes your computer experience may appear tomorrow. One of the search results was NautilusSVN, which, if I recall correctly, Spite suggested as an option some time ago. Turns out NautilusSVN has been renamed to RabbitVCS, seems they don't want to close themselves to Subversion only (which is good).

When I tried it some months ago I found it was quite rudimentary... command line installation as plug-in for nautilus, everything becoming super slow, crash again and again... Surprisingly, this time has been totally different experience. Straightforward to install, the file browser still performs fast enough and it certainly brings the TortoiseSVN days back.

Yes I know, "Use the SVN command line like real man!" yada yada... not!

EDIT: As per version 0.12 nautilus can get pretty slow over the time to the point that you have to wait 30 seconds to go up a folder. Apparently this is being fixed on 0.13.