Versions goes beta

Almost a year ago, we wrote about Versions, a program designed to bring an intuitive and attractive interface to the Subversion version control system. Now, Made by Sofa has finally released the first beta.

Although Versions isn't the only game in town for accessing Subversion repositories through methods other than the command line, it is certainly the best looking, and at least in the few minutes I've spent with it, the most Mac-like. The application is beautiful and the interface is very easy to use and understand.

After entering in the location of your SVN repository (or local folder if you are working on something locally), you are presented with three different options: Timeline, Browse, and Transcript. The Timeline view shows all the changes that have been made to the repository trac, clicking on a file name brings up a window showing the file before and after, side-by-side, making it extremely easy to see what was changed (changed lines are highlighted).

The Browse view basically looks like an FTP window and makes it easy to browse all the files and directories in a repository. From there, you can compare differences, show history and checkout the file if you want to make changes. If you have change access, you can then implement those on the fly.

The transcript menu is pretty much just a log of all your actions during your Versions session.

I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with Versions from what I have seen thus far. The application is intuitive and easy to use and the interface is very, very clean. That said, I know that most of the Open Source projects I follow are switching to Git in rapid succession, so it is unclear how that change will affect clients like Versions.

The beta version says it is expiring in 26 days, so if you are a developer who is either sick of terminal or a little scared of Subversion, give it a shot! Versions requires OS X 10.4.9 or higher, though the developers recommend 10.5.2 or higher.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!