Which plugin do you use for SVN in Visual Studio?

visual-studio svn version-control visualsvn ankhsvn

41,360

Solution 1

I've used AnkhSVN for the past year and I've never had a problem with it. I switch between that and TFS and some of the times I think I prefer AnkhSVN to TFS.

Solution 2

I use VisualSVN and it works great, but you're correct, it's not free. No experience with Ankh here.

Solution 3

Early versions (1.X) of AnkhSVN were pretty unstable. Latest builds (v2.0.x) work as a native VisualStudio source control provider and it's very stable. I would recommend you to just download and try it yourself.

Solution 4

I also use AnkhSVN and it does work OK but I tend to drop to the file system to work with TortoiseSVN. For some reason I feel safer using Tortoise. I think that come's from concerns about Visual Studio than it is AnkhSsvn.

Solution 5

I tried AnkhSVN, but didn't like it. It tried to do too many things automatically and behind the scenes (e.g. adding files to SVN). I prefer if I see exactly what happens.

Now I mainly use TortoiseSVN (outside Visual Studio) or sometimes Mindscape VS FileExplorer in Visual Studio (which is available for free).

Note: VS FileExplorer plugin simply displays a file explorer in VS and allows you to invoke TortoiseSVN from there (and it also displays the TortoiseSVN overlay icons).

Update:

I reinstalled the current version of AnkhSVN 2.0.5250 and tried to reproduce the problems described above in a sample solution.

Result: AnkhSVN did exactly what I expected. I was not able to reproduce any of the problems. I think it might be time to give AnkhSVN another try at work!

Update 2:

I have now used AnkhSVN for some days, and I have to say it works very well. It's a big improvement compared to the previous version (1.x).

View more solutions

41,360

Author by

Brann

Updated on July 09, 2022

Comments

Brann almost 2 years
I'm considering using SVN for my .Net projects, and I'd like to know what plugins are available for integrating the source control capabilities directly into the Visual Studio IDE.

I already know about the following Visual Studio extensions:
1. VisualSVN, which seems great but is not free. It is implemented as a low-level VS package extension. Is anyone using it?
2. AnkhSVN, which is free but I've heard it's a bit buggy. It is implemented as a VS add-in extension. Is anyone using it? are you experiencing problems? Edit: The 2.0 version is a complete rewrite and seems to solve the problem I've heard about (which were related to the 1.x versions)
3. Edit : TortoiseSVN + Mindscape's FileExplorer VS Extension, which is not a real IDE integration but somewhat eases the use of TortoiseSVN from Visual Studio.
Edit : I've found a few comparison posts between AnkhSVN and VisualSVN here, here and here.
- John Sheehan over 15 years
  
  I think this is close enough to the links you posted to be considered a dupe
- George Stocker over 15 years
  
  This seems like a poll. There are three questions that deal with this already, this is a duplicate and ought to be closed.
- Brann over 15 years
  
  Hello. The posts I'm mentioning are focusing on AnkhSVN and ?VisualSVN. My question was rather "are there other solutions". Answers to this question cannot be found anywhere else on StackOverflow. And I think you won't find another post mentioning FileExplorer VS Extension, for example.
Brann over 15 years

why didn't you like ANkhSVN? Have you experienced specific problems/missing features/bugs ?
M4N over 15 years

@Brann: I added some more info to my answer.
Brann over 15 years

Thanks. I didn't know about the FileExplorer plugin. It definitely eases the use of Tortoise SVN from the IDE, but I still prefer to have a real IDE integration.
David A Gibson over 15 years

I didn't know about VS FileExplorer either but it sounds good would address the concerns in my answer, +1 from me!
Raghib Ahsan over 15 years

For the record, this goes for VisualSVN as well. Early versions were extremely buggy, but the product cleared up completely and today it's pretty stable. This might be an indicator for the quality of development.
John Sheehan over 15 years

VisualSVN is worth every penny.
Bert Huijben over 15 years

AnkhSVN 2.0 never automatically adds files to subversion. It just makes it very easy to add them when you want to commit. Just look at the file status: New (blue; unadded but in your project) and Added (yellow; manually added to subversion)
Bert Huijben over 15 years

When you check a new file when committing it is added right before the commit. (If you don't check the file it is left unversioned). If you want to add files earlier you can do that via the add and appy-to-working-copy commands.
M4N over 15 years

@Bert: I'm pretty sure that it did add some files automatically. I can't remember exactly what kind of files, but I think it was either DLLs in a website's bin folder (I only wanted the .refresh files under version control) or some generated files in the bin folder (PDB, XML). I can check again.
Dmitri Nesteruk over 15 years

But then, what are the advantages of Visual over Ankh?
Anheledir over 15 years

That is a major refutation for AnkhSVN. To restart Visual Studio a couple of times a day (yes, we commit a lot) is out of the question when working with bug Solutions (>5 projects with each >2.500 files). I must lean on my work environment and we don't have such breakdowns with VisualSVN.
lc. over 15 years

Good point. I just edited this answer though as I don't think the error was related to AnkhSVN after all. I've just hit a point where I'm using the dataset designer less, and I haven't had issues.
Bert Huijben over 15 years

@Martin: AnkhSVN 1.X did automatically add files (and I hated that :))... We removed that behavior in 2.0. Now we show you which files should be added (blue '+') and we make it very easy to add these files when you are committing.
Jonathan Olson about 15 years

Same as you: had issues with Ankh, didn't think it was much value, and have just used Tortoise outside VS and have been happy with that. May give Ankh another go though now, thanks Martin!
M4N about 15 years

I'm still using Ankh (a recent daily build). I works as expected.
Bert Huijben about 15 years

Which AnkhSVN version did you try this on? (And if you remember between what project types that would be even better)
Markus Joschko over 14 years

I had used early versions of AnkhSVN and they were buggy as hell. I moved on to TortoiseSVN and am happy with that now. I cannot opine on the current status of AnkhSVN.
MGOwen about 14 years

AnkhSvn was useless for a year or two. Any version released after 2009 is perfectly fine.
MGOwen about 14 years

I always create repositories and branches using tortoise, and commit/update/etc within VS using Ankh.
Robs about 13 years

I like VisualSVN, but it is not really value for money. I would go for AnkhSVN, it is just as good and free.
mrsheen about 12 years

Nice plug-in. Works well with Visual Studio and svn.
bahrep about 11 years

@Lucifer VisualSVN 3.x has free license in fact
Redeemed1 over 9 years

I second that, it was worth the reasonable price for the better reliability that we couldn't seem to get with AnkhSVN. To be fair, I used AnkhSVN for many years until we seemed to be getting some uncertain behaviours so I evaluated VisualSVN and have had no reason to change from it for the last 4 years (other than using either Mercurial with visualHg or Git as the local repo in front of SVN which tends to be my preference now)