Centralized Model, Revisions & the Core Workflow

Centralized, Not Distributed

Subversion (SVN) is a centralized version control system — one central server holds the authoritative repository and full history; developers check out working copies but don't have a complete local copy of the entire history the way a Git clone does.

Revision Numbers

Unlike Git's per-commit SHA hashes, an SVN revision number is a single, global, sequentially incrementing integer representing the entire repository's state at that point — a simple, human-friendly identifier ("r4521") rather than a hash.

The Core Command Loop

svn checkout https://svn.example.com/repo/trunk myproject
cd myproject
# ... edit files ...
svn diff                    # review local changes
svn update                  # pull others' changes first
svn commit -m "Fix bug"      # publish immediately — no local staging step

checkout creates a working copy from the server. update pulls the latest revisions in. commit sends local changes straight to the central server, immediately visible to everyone — SVN has no separate local-commit-then-push step like Git, so a commit is inherently a publish. revert discards uncommitted local edits without touching the central repository.