SVN Commit regulations

Question

Should commits be made only if the solution compiles and builds successfully? are "mid-way" commits acceptable in very large changes that leave the code not working for say, a few hours?

Answer 1

Yes it is acceptable.

Version control is for version control; not backup. You should have something separate in place for dealing with backups of compilable code which may indeed circle back around to the version control system.

Either way forcing a developer to wait to check in code is an impending disaster of lost code at some point.

Answer 2

Ensuring that code doesn't stay broken for too long is the job of continuous integration, not version control.