Are you a developer using Linux? Do you use a Version Control Software like SVN / GIT/ Mercurial ? Do you feel bored of sticking with command line client tool and looking for a Graphical tool like Tortoise SVN for Windows?

I am an ardent fan of Linux and we use subversion everyday for our development activites. In my initial days of coding, I was sticking to the command line subversion, the one we get with the distro.

It can usually be installed by the following command

$sudo apt-get install subversion

Sticking with terminal for all the subversion operations is always a trouble.. I always wanted to have a nice graphical client like Tortoise SVN for Windows.

With a little search, I found a very cool tool for version control management, which is primarily inspired by TortoiseSVN, called RabbitVCS.

It is more convenient and handy to use rather than sticking to commands and command prompts.

It has been the best Graphical client for Linux especially for Ubuntu. One who is an avid fan of Tortoise SVN and when they switch from Windows to Linux, this is the best alternative.

You find most of the Tortoise SVN features and It nicely integrates with GNOME nautilus.

Very interestingly, now RabbitVCS supports not only subversion, but also GIT and Mercurial. Other Version control software are yet to get integrated.

What is RabbitVCS ?

RabbitVCS is a set of graphical tools written to provide simple and straightforward access to the version control systems you use. It provides multiple clients and extensions designed to give you a uniform experience no matter what development tools you use. Currently, it is integrated into the Nautilus file manager and supports Subversion, GIT, Mercurial. Soon to incorporate other version control systems as well as other file managers.

RabbitVCS is Free/Open Source Software written in the Python and is based upon the PyGTK library.

Screenshots

Nautilus Integration

Commit Dialog

Action/Notification Window

Show Log

Blame/Annotate

How to install RabbitVCS in Ubuntu ?

Adding the PPA

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rabbitvcs/ppa

Add the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list file (signing key=1024R/34EF4A35):

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rabbitvcs/ppa/ubuntu **DISTRIBUTION** main

Update your software package repositories with:

sudo apt-get update

And install it with:

sudo apt-get install rabbitvcs-core rabbitvcs-nautilus rabbitvcs-thunar rabbitvcs-gedit rabbitvcs-cli

From the Tarball

Installing from our distributed tarball is relatively straightforward on Ubuntu. First, make sure you install all dependencies:

sudo apt-get install python-nautilus python-configobj python-gtk2 python-glade2 python-svn python-dbus python-dulwich subversion meld

Then download the tarball and from the top folder type:

sudo python setup.py install

Once that is done working, look in the clients folder and read the README file for each client/plugin to learn how they are installed.

RabbitVCS is now available for Ubuntu 11.04