Is it bad practice to use two SVN clients at the same time?

Question

I am currently using Tortoise SVN and a SVN plugin from my IDE. Sometime problems appear, and it seems that my .svn aren't always in a consistent state. So is a bad practice to use two SVN clients ? (looking from a practical approach). Do you have links related to SVN best practices ? Thank you.

Answer 1

You can use however many makes it easy to do your job.

We're using Tortoise on all machines, and AnkhSvn for those who use Visual Studio as well. Most of the time I'll use the plugin, but it often has issues doing things like complicated moves or renames, so in those instances I'll use Tortoise. Whatever gets the job done. I also really like the shell integration that Tortoise gives you.

If you're using multiple clients, it's a bit of trial and error to find which client works best for which operations, but that shouldn't take too long.

One thing you need to watch is to make sure the SVN clients remain compatible with the version of SVN on your server, and that all the clients are capable of reading/writing between each other. I recommend reading the release notes before installing any updates to the clients (which often have automatic update type mechanisms).

Answer 2

Yes, it is a very bad idea. SVN is notorious for silently upgrading the on-disk data structures to the newest format it understands, so whenever only one of your clients is updated to a newer program version (e.g. because you used "refresh plugins" in your IDE, or when you refresh your Cywgin installation...), the other one may be locked out. If it isn't easily upgradeable, e.g. because your IDE plugin hasn't actually been rewritten yet, you're screwed. At the very least, use only clients that cannot possibly self-update without your knowledge.