Subversion and the Big Apple

Say you're working in a company with a top-notch creative department. They're excited about your new push for not using SourceSafe. Only one problem.

They're using Macs.

So, what do you do? You could tell them to use the command-line version and leave you alone. You could tell them to use Parallels and use the Windows pretty clients. Or, you could look for other options.

I'm not a Mac guy. Don't get me wrong, I think they make some great machines. The move to Intel processors has sorely tempted to get one for my home computer. My wife loves the Mini. But in a .NET world, Windows is the way to go. So, naturally, that's where I started looking for clients.

But your pretty pictures and shiny stylesheets (mmm... alliteration) don't have to come from a Windows machine. And if they don't, you still need a way to get them from your creative types to your developers.

We're evaluating both options right now. svnX is free, ZigVersion isn't. I'll let you know what our design team thinks.

One more thing. There's a lot of Java Swing based clients out there. We didn't like them for the same reason some people don't like Swing applications - it just doesn't feel right. It's not quite Windows, not quite OS X. That's just a personal preference.