SVN without server for our Visual Studio development

Question

Security is not an issue for our small team. Is there any compelling reason why we might need to use an SVN server of some sort, rather than just using files on a network share somewhere?

EDIT

Sorry--I don't think I communicated very well.

I want to use SVN for version control. I think that I do not need a "server". The team members can all point their SVN clients to a network location.

Is that good enough?

Or do I need a "server"?

Answer 1

Yes, you can create a repository on some folder and point your clients there, no svnserve process or apache2 + mod_svn is really needed.

There are a however a couple of reasons why you should consider a server:

• Synchronicity: A file based repository is altered by the clients that access it. If one of your clients' clock is out of sync with the rest of the team, he/she may in rare cases corrupt the repository data. A server however will always have a unique time.
• Scalability: When the amount of commits per day grows, the file based lock/commit/unlock sequence may cause unexpected load on the file server and frustrate your team with long response times.
• Extensibility: Better sooner than later you or your team will discover the need for a ticket system (for QA/QC or 3rd level support, e.g. Trac, Redmine, Bugzilla) and then having issues and their fixes associated with revision control will indeed become a must have. These ticket systems always accept a svn:// URL but will most likely reject a file based repository.

I don't know if these reasons are compelling enough for you, but you can indeed postpone the decision to go server until it starts to become unavoidable - even indefinitely if your team does never grow.