{"slug": "svn", "name": "SVN", "category": "git", "category_name": "Git and code hosting", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 6, "warners": 2, "score": 0.62, "rising": 0.67, "first": "2026-02-21", "latest": "2026-09-10", "why": "If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 2, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["SVN", "svn"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 794235745, "item_id": 49639734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639734", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN.", "excerpt": "What second coming? If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN. In fact, the way I use Git is hardly any different, I have no interest in getting a black belt in git magic.", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 764274208, "item_id": 47767138, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767138", "by": "pheggs", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I was already pretty happy with svn to be honest", "excerpt": "I was already pretty happy with svn to be honest, I dont see myself switching away from the industry standard today for no substantial reason. in my opinion git was only able to change the standard thanks to github and a popular author (i love git and its branching, but I dont think it would have been enough if it was just for that). I personally believe its going to be very difficult for jj to replicate that.", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is jj and why should I care?"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 780637009, "item_id": 48789813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789813", "by": "smackeyacky", "date": "2026-07-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "SVN, hands down a cranky and unreliable dumpster fire was the worst.", "excerpt": "This is something git shares with pretty much every source code management system. Of the ones I\u2019ve used over the years including SVN, PVCS, whatever that janky little Microsoft one was called and even sccs in the old days, they all sucked one way or another. The only one that was truly intuitive to me was Envy/Developer. It only really made sense because we used it in Smalltalk but I really liked the packaged nature", "context": "", "use_case": "source control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't people use Git properly?"}, {"id": 753656000, "item_id": 47103500, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103500", "by": "estimator7292", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "We used SVN, which even in 2015 was prehistoric technology.", "excerpt": "I still have nightmares from my first dev gig. We used SVN, which even in 2015 was prehistoric technology. The server was some awful rustbucket that couldn't sustain 100Mbit. Yes, it couldn't saturate basic 100megabit Ethernet. Everyone had to have big drives in their workstations to maintain multiple local trees. You just couldn't work otherwise. But probably the worst part was that when I started it was a loose org", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Trunk Based Development"}]}], "who": [{"by": "codezero", "context": "worked at an astrophysics lab in 2006", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47914637", "date": "2026-04-26"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["version control", "main source control", "source control"], "compared": [{"slug": "git", "name": "Git", "co": 8, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "mercurial", "name": "Mercurial", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49603265", "title": "Version control second coming", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49187256", "title": "Zed DeltaDB", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48787122", "title": "Why don't people use Git properly?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47913855", "title": "Fast16: Cyberweapon that predates Stuxnet by five years", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47763759", "title": "What is jj and why should I care?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47098252", "title": "Trunk Based Development", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"warn": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 794235745, "item_id": 49639734, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639734", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-09-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN.", "excerpt": "What second coming? If I had the option I would still be using either Mercurial or SVN. In fact, the way I use Git is hardly any different, I have no interest in getting a black belt in git magic.", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Version control second coming"}, {"id": 787049857, "item_id": 49190616, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49190616", "by": "zeroq", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Suddenly I was able to teleport myself to a version from before the lunch while SVN history was crystal clear.", "excerpt": "tangent Once I've tried one SCM to track every single change to my files, and the other for bulk commits. The result was quite satisfying. It was some 15 years ago, we just switched from CVS to SVN and everyone thought it was the end of the history, at least for SCMs. Main branch was called master, and we were locking files by simply telling our teammates not to touch them. At one time I decided I really missed the E", "context": "", "use_case": "main source control", "switched_from": "CVS", "story": "Zed DeltaDB"}, {"id": 780637009, "item_id": 48789813, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48789813", "by": "smackeyacky", "date": "2026-07-04", "stance": "warn", "quote": "SVN, hands down a cranky and unreliable dumpster fire was the worst.", "excerpt": "This is something git shares with pretty much every source code management system. Of the ones I\u2019ve used over the years including SVN, PVCS, whatever that janky little Microsoft one was called and even sccs in the old days, they all sucked one way or another. The only one that was truly intuitive to me was Envy/Developer. It only really made sense because we used it in Smalltalk but I really liked the packaged nature", "context": "", "use_case": "source control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why don't people use Git properly?"}, {"id": 766634192, "item_id": 47914637, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47914637", "by": "codezero", "date": "2026-04-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The astrophysics lab I worked at in 2006 was still using svn", "excerpt": "My favorite part of this was: That kind of notation, called SCCS/RCS, is the equivalent of finding a rotary phone in a modern office. Nobody uses it in 2005 Windows kernel code unless their programming background goes back decades, to government and military computing environments \u2014 The astrophysics lab I worked at in 2006 was still using svn and had a bunch of Fortran with references to systems from the 70s and 80s.", "context": "worked at an astrophysics lab in 2006", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fast16: Cyberweapon that predates Stuxnet by five years"}, {"id": 764274208, "item_id": 47767138, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47767138", "by": "pheggs", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I was already pretty happy with svn to be honest", "excerpt": "I was already pretty happy with svn to be honest, I dont see myself switching away from the industry standard today for no substantial reason. in my opinion git was only able to change the standard thanks to github and a popular author (i love git and its branching, but I dont think it would have been enough if it was just for that). I personally believe its going to be very difficult for jj to replicate that.", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is jj and why should I care?"}, {"id": 753656000, "item_id": 47103500, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103500", "by": "estimator7292", "date": "2026-02-21", "stance": "warn", "quote": "We used SVN, which even in 2015 was prehistoric technology.", "excerpt": "I still have nightmares from my first dev gig. We used SVN, which even in 2015 was prehistoric technology. The server was some awful rustbucket that couldn't sustain 100Mbit. Yes, it couldn't saturate basic 100megabit Ethernet. Everyone had to have big drives in their workstations to maintain multiple local trees. You just couldn't work otherwise. But probably the worst part was that when I started it was a loose org", "context": "", "use_case": "version control", "switched_from": "", "story": "Trunk Based Development"}]}