SnailSVN: SVN for Finder 4+

Useful but missing one critical feature for me

I had been using Cornerstone to check in and manage system config files with our SVN repos. I had been looking for an alternative for a while and came across SnailSVN. I had used TortiseSVN under Windows years ago and it worked fine for what we needed.

So far I have been very happy with SnailSVN. It is slow, but I expected that, especially given the size of our repos (lots of small config files). I like the integration with the Finder, it makes it very easy to see status of files (up to date, changed, not added yet), and run Commits and Updates.

I would have given it 5 stars but for two issues. One is probably my fault, the other is the way it works. I have not been able to convince it to use my installation of BBEdit for compares (diff). The other issue is that it is NOT maintaining timestamp on checked out files. I rely on the timestamp to know when a config file has changed and whne I need to push a new one out to the server (using Yummy PRO SFTP tool). Unfortunately, all the local copies of the config files are timestamped when I checked them out and not the last time they were modified. Cornerstone was able to maintain modification time, so I know it can be done. I would love to see that as an option in the SnailSVN configuration.

Developer Response ,

Hi PK1048,
To use BBEdit for compare/diff, you need to install the BBEdit command line tools:
https://www.barebones.com/support/bbedit/cmd-line-tools.html ;
For the timestamp issue, you can enable the "use-commit-times" option in "~/Library/Containers/net.langui.SnailSVN/Data/.subversion/config".
Thank you!

Very nice!

This is a really fine way to interact with your SVN repository(ies) from within the Finder, and (aside from a few quibbles) I really like it much more than using the Versions app or (heaven forbid) the command line. It has a few rough spots (still working on getting icon overlays to work on Catalina), but honestly I would thoroughly recommend this if you'd like to interact from Finder with your repository. I'm very happy with my purchase, and would recommend without hesitation.

Really good coming from TortoiseSVN

We use SVN for large datasets that Git just cant handle sanely and this works really well on macOS and is decently close to TortoiseSVN on Windows.

The overlay icons dont work for me, but I cant live with that as the main thing I need is a decent UI to pick which files to commit/revert/etc. That being said if there's a way to get the overlays working I would take it ;)

One thing that would be really nice in a future update is to support the shelve extension. TortoiseSVN supports both shelf2 and shelf3 and its really useful to checkpoint local changes from time to time before commiting. I do that form the CLI atm but I cant easily select which files to shelve so I have to shelve/unshelve everything to stay sane.

Developer Response ,

Hi,
The shelve/unshelve operations are supported in SnailSVN 1.15.1 now, please select SVN 1.14.x in "SnailSVN Preferences -> SVN Settings -> Settings" in order to use these functionalities.
Thank you!