How to Read This Book

Technical books always face a certain dilemma: whether to cater to top-down or to bottom-up learners. A top-down learner prefers to read or skim documentation, getting a large overview of how the system works; only then does she actually start using the software. A bottom-learner is a “learn by doing” person—someone who just wants to dive into the software and figure it out as she goes, referring to book sections when necessary. Most books tend to be written for one type of person or the other, and this book is undoubtedly biased towards top-down learners. (And if you're actually reading this section, you're probably already a top-down learner yourself!) However, if you're a bottom-up person, don't despair. While the book may be laid out as a broad survey of Subversion topics, the content of each section tends to be heavy with specific examples that you can try-by-doing. For the impatient folks who just want to get going, you can jump right to 附录 A, Subversion 快速入门指南.

Regardless of your learning style, this book aims to be useful to people of widely different backgrounds—from those with no previous experience in version control to experienced system administrators. Depending on your own background, certain chapters may be more or less important to you. The following can be considered a “recommended reading list” for various types of readers:

资深系统管理员

The assumption here is that you've probably used version control before and are dying to get a Subversion server up and running ASAP. 第 5 章 版本库管理 and 第 6 章 服务配置 will show you how to create your first repository and make it available over the network. After that's done, 第 2 章 基本使用 and 附录 B, CVS用户的Subversion指南 are the fastest routes to learning the Subversion client.

新用户

如果管理员已经为你准备好了Subversion服务,你所需要的是学习如何使用客户端。如果你没有使用版本控制系统(像CVS)的经验,那么第 1 章 基本概念第 2 章 基本使用是重要的入门教程,其中介绍了版本控制的重要思想。

高级用户

Whether you're a user or administrator, eventually your project will grow larger. You're going to want to learn how to do more advanced things with Subversion, such as how to use Subversion's property support (第 3 章 高级主题), how to use branches and perform merges (第 4 章 分支与合并), how to configure runtime options (第 7 章 定制你的Subversion体验), and other things. These chapters aren't critical at first, but be sure to read them once you're comfortable with the basics.

开发者

你应该已经很熟悉Subversion了,并且想扩展它或使用它的API开发新软件。第 8 章 嵌入Subversion将最适合你。

本书以参考材料作为结束—第 9 章 Subversion 完全参考是一部Subversion全部命令的详细指南,此外,在附录中还有许多很有意义的主题。阅读完本书后,这些章节将会是你经常查阅的内容。