I’m leaving the original lesson at the bottom of this page, to show how to install Subversion and VisualSVN. However, most programmers use Git and GitHub for version control.
If you want to use GitHub instead, here’s a video of how to connect your GitHub account with Visual Studio Community Edition 2022. This video assumes you’ve already created an account on GitHub
ORIGINAL SUBVERSION LESSON
This is a quick lesson to show how to install source control software. Installing these programs is optional, but highly recommended.
You’ll need to use source control, if you become a professional programmer. It’s also extremely useful for beginning programmers.
Source control lets you “check in” (save) versions of your program in a “repository”.
When you add a new feature to your program, and are done testing it, you can save that version of your program to the repository. If you ever have a problem with your program, you can “revert” (undo) your changes. Then, you’ll be back to the last version you checked in to your repository.
The source control program I’ll use is Subversion.
There are several other source control programs, including GitHub – which keeps your repository on their servers. However, I think Subversion is an easy one to start with.
Installing TortoiseSVN
I use TortoiseSVN. It’s a version of Subversion that includes some extra features.
Download it from https://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html. You should be able to use the 64-bit version, unless you are working on some older tablet computers.
Installing VisualSVN
VisualSVN is a plugin to help you use Subversion inside Visual Studio.
Download it from https://www.visualsvn.com/visualsvn/download/ and run the installer.
Using source control
In each lesson, I’ll check in the code to my repository, after I know the program works with the changes I made. I suggest you do the same.
Resources
TortoiseSVN: https://tortoisesvn.net/downloads.html
VisualSVN: https://www.visualsvn.com/visualsvn/download/
GitHub: https://github.com/
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