First I did today was testing my idea I had yesterday evening. Windows can easily access WebDAV folders, and by this you can use a subversion folder almost as if it would be a normal Windows folder. Turning autoversioning on you can copy changed files to the folder and get a new revision.

Just copy?

Yes, unfortunately you can't edit files on such shares directly, because Windows isn't able to use the standard locking mechanisms defined for DAV.

So I had a local file to which I saved often and after saving I copied it to the WebDAV folder (it's really nice to have two monitors for such things ;).

Other stupid (Windows) things

First, the dialogs used when copying to a WebDAV folder (and dialogs asking for overwriting and so on) are not Windows XP styled but look very old. That I can't understand…

Second, I had to add an unsecured access for this repository. For some reason Windows XP wouldn't accept my https connection, which IExplorer, Firefox and TortoiseSVN except without problems. I don't have an officially signed certificate obviously, but I imported this one when asked (and the dialog said, it's ok). It didn't work, explorer just kept complaining…

Using a subversion repository throug WebDAV for daily work?

It didn't work as I hoped, so for real work with LabVIEW e.g. (direct editing) it isn't usable nevertheless. And I wouldn't like using subversion this way anyway. Because you commit too often (on every copy, or save if locking would work) and you don't get nice log entries (using some other client you don't get them by themselves as well, but you have a chance at least ;). So I will use this “temporary” repository for disaster recovery when working with some problematic but important applications like Diadem (it's faster to copy the file to the WebDAV share using D'n'D than using TortoiseSVN or doing a save as and you have old versions available), but not for more.