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Is there a command-line based version of svn for Windows? I know I can get TortoiseSVN, but that just doesn't work for me.

Wolf
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Pieter
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    What's your actual problem you want to solve with the native client? Why not use the bundled native client of TortoiseSVN? Describing your actual problem (ie *WHY* it dos not work) would be a better way to start a question instead of asking for available options ... –  Aug 19 '15 at 09:50

10 Answers10

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TortoiseSVN contains a console svn client, but by default the corresponding option is not enabled during installation.

The svn.exe executable is not standalone and it depends on some other files1 in the distribution but this should not be a problem in most cases.

Once installed you might need to add the folder containing svn.exe to the system PATH as described here so that it is available in your console. To check if it was already added by the installer open a new console and type echo %PATH%. Use set on its own to see all environmental variables.

TortoiseSVN install wizard

1 for the svn* executables in TortoiseSVN 1.14.1, the following files are required on the PATH:

intl3_tsvn.dll
libaprutil_tsvn.dll
libapr_tsvn.dll
libsasl.dll
libsvn_tsvn.dll
zb226
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ccpizza
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    I like this answer the best and didn't know tortoise came with a command line client. One less program is one less thing to keep track of. – Transact Charlie Aug 06 '13 at 14:03
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    Well, how can I use it? I hope to have a shell which shows some different color for different file status just like git shell does. – JaskeyLam Jan 26 '15 at 05:24
  • @Jaskey: Yes, there is a colorizer for SVN output. I use this one: https://github.com/jmlacroix/svn-color/blob/master/svn-color.sh - but it is not perfect, i had to modify it a bit since it does not support all the commands. Maybe there are other ones too, although I didn't see yet anything better. Of course, it is bash-only, so if you are on a windows box you'll need something like msys or cygwin. – ccpizza Jan 26 '15 at 09:53
  • Does not seem to add svn in PATH. Had to do it manually - `C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin` – Aniket Thakur Apr 06 '15 at 06:39
  • It should probably be added that **if you use TSVN**, it's important **not to mix** up your work on a given working copy by using a command line with a different svn lib version. The corresponding Subversion library version is constantly announced with each new TSVN release (the installer packages are therefore named with two version informations). – Wolf Aug 18 '15 at 11:14
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    My installer automatically added it to the PATH. Definitely need to restart your cmd window though. – Roger Jun 09 '16 at 21:31
  • This answer shows how to install TortoiseSVN and the svn command-line client using msiexec: http://stackoverflow.com/a/40281053/755405 – W1M0R Oct 27 '16 at 09:40
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    Great answer! If the cmd line client has not been installed (as it was in my case) it can be easily added: Just restart the T SVN installer and choose "Modify". Then add the client in to the selection of parts that should be installed. – Jpsy Mar 21 '18 at 08:26
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The subversion client itself is available on Windows. See here for certified binaries from CollabNet.

CollabNet Subversion Command-Line Client v1.6.9 (for Windows)

This installer only includes the command-line client and an auto-update component.

Even though I can't understand it's possible not to love Tortoise! :)

Note:
The above link is for newer products - you can find version 1.11.1 through 1.7.19 at Older Subversion Releases

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Pekka
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  • I sometimes get weird conflicts that I don't get when using svn on the command line. But that has been resolved now. – Pieter Feb 26 '10 at 11:47
  • @Pieter - *TortoiseSVN* does not have its own logic for handling conflicts - it relies completely on the SVN libraries for that. It does, however, come with a nice editor for handling conflicts. – D'Arcy Rittich Feb 26 '10 at 12:37
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    Requires registration to download :/ – simon Dec 07 '11 at 10:09
  • In tortoise its not possible (or i dont know how) to get a condesed diff spaning multiple files. I like that feature. – Smalcat Sep 19 '12 at 12:21
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    Be careful of the CollabNet registration form. If the submitted form has errors (which it will because of how it is designed), it will recheck the newsletters checkbox. – Jeff Clemens Jul 17 '13 at 16:26
  • I need to schedule a task which would be triggered when my Windows is idle for a while. CollabNet seems to meet the requirement. – Truong Ha Oct 04 '13 at 02:42
  • Tortoise slows down when you have large projects. It's great for smaller projects but when they get large there is a lot of calling the repo to update the windows icons which can get quite slow – bernieslearnings Feb 23 '18 at 00:45
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    You can download svn on windows without registration. Install Chocolatey https://chocolatey.org/docs/installation , and then type `choco install svn`. – cowlinator Apr 04 '19 at 01:15
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    The subversion download on CollabNet is no where to be found and all the links are redirected to the home page. – Martin Aug 03 '20 at 08:34
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    no need to install anything - just download the Apache Subversion command line tools from https://www.visualsvn.com/downloads/ (and edit the PATH variable) – Alexander Mihailov Jan 26 '22 at 17:19
77

I've used sliksvn and it works great for me

klennepette
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    Pretty great, if you want a small (<6mb) client, which is even smaller then CollabNet's client (and you don't want to register to another company's site ;) ). – Robert Heine Oct 01 '12 at 09:17
  • Nice tool. It also works as a standalone when you copy everything after installation to another folder. – pavex Mar 10 '18 at 09:17
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    I'll upvote this. All I needed was a simple command line client for testing, I didn't want to go through installing something like Tortoise just for that. SlikSvn did the trick. – Michael Martinez Jan 03 '19 at 16:24
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cygwin is another option. It has a port of svn.

Dan Andreatta
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    installing `cygwin` just for svn? that's brutal (and unnecessary since there are quite a few 'native' clients) – Idan K Feb 26 '10 at 12:34
  • It is a bit of an overkill, I agree. – Dan Andreatta Feb 26 '10 at 13:57
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    anyway.. it's a **another** option, actually. – alcor Jul 19 '12 at 08:00
  • Do you need a special package for SVN? It didn't come with the default download of Cygwin that I recently installed on my computer. – Nerf Herder Feb 18 '14 at 19:51
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    But if you already have `cygwin`, this is a perfectly reasonable option to consider. I think that's the point of this answer. – pattivacek Jul 16 '14 at 14:30
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    I think cygwin is perfect command line svn alternative, because the other linux tools, and scripting possibilities. You need to select subversion package in cygwin setup, to access svn commands. – voji Oct 25 '15 at 07:08
  • @IdanK Only if you *know* svn is all you'll ever need. Otherwise, it can do so much more (at the very least, it can be the one place that contains all unix-derived tools). – simlev Jul 30 '20 at 09:47
  • many a day of my developer life lost in older versions of cygwin. thank the internet better versions exist. – JJS Jul 20 '21 at 21:50
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You can get SVN command-line tools with TortoiseSVN 1.7 or later or get a 6.5mb standalone package from VisualSVN.

Starting with TortoiseSVN 1.7, its installer provides you with an option to install the command-line tools.

It also makes sense to check the Apache Subversion "Binary Packages" page. xD

bahrep
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    Wow, that VisualSVN standalone package is excellent! That particular link you found, I have no idea how you found it. As far as I can tell, there is no way to navigate to that page from their site, you simply have to have inside knowledge that it exists! – SeanRamey Dec 28 '18 at 04:35
  • @SeanRamey you can find the link to this page at http://subversion.apache.org/packages.html#windows – bahrep Dec 28 '18 at 13:45
  • odd, I could have sworn that clicking the link on that page took me directly to https://www.visualsvn.com/server/ – SeanRamey Jan 03 '19 at 07:22
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VisualSVN for Windows has a command-line-only executable (as well Visual Studio plugins). See https://www.visualsvn.com/downloads/

It is completely portable, so no installation is necessary.

cowlinator
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You can use Apache Subversion. It is owner of subversion . You can download from here . After install it, you have to restart pc to use svn from command line.

hkaraoglu
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    easiest so far. And no, you don´t have to restart your pc. – Sebas Mar 09 '17 at 12:54
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    Doesn't appear to be maintained any longer. Last update was 2016. Subversion 1.8.17 seems to be the newest supported. The current LTS is 1.10.x and 1.13 is the current normal version. I wouldn't recommend this package for most at this point. – ahwm Dec 09 '19 at 18:21
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If you have Windows 10 you can use Bash on Ubuntu on Windows to install subversion.

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user2418306
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As Damian noted here Command line subversion client for Windows Vista 64bits TortoiseSVN has command line tools that are unchecked by default during installation.

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kaupov
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Install MSYS2, it has svn in its repository (besides lots of other Unix goodies). MSYS2 installs without Windows Admin rights.

$ pacman -S svn

The tools can be used from cmd, too:

C:\>C:\msys64\usr\bin\svn.exe co http://somehost/somerepo/
weberjn
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