"Practical Subversion" is a great book for repository administrators starting to use Subversion. If you are just planning to use Subversion as a tool, most of the book won't be relevant to you.

The authors cast a wide net in what they cover. They start with Subversion basics - commands and creating a repository. More advanced concepts are quickly covered including security, logging and other tools. I particularly liked the chapter on best practices. They describe the pros and cons when there are two valid approaches. Many of these practices aren't specific to Subversion, but all are important to consider.

Subversion is compared to CVS and Perforce throughout the book. I understand why they chose CVS as it is an open source tool and the predecessor to Subversion. I'm still puzzled why they chose Perforce. Maybe because it has the concept of a "changeset" or one of the authors had experience with it or something else entirely. In the migration section, other tools were also covered including Visual Source Safe.

With open source projects, I like books that aren't just the documentation in book form. For this project, it is an even greater challenge as the documentation is a book ("Version Control with Subversion.") For the commands and daily use, the online documentation is equivalent. For repository administrators and migration issues, this book really shines. The book also expands on the documentation nicely in the area of calling Subversion APIs from C, Perl and Python.

Great book, *required* reading if you're planning on using the Subversion client API. This is the only book I've found that talks in a serious way about coding/interfacing directly with the Subversion libraries.

The authors speak with authority as to "best practices" and things to which you should pay attention -- in part because they are key contributors to the Subversion project. I like their view on issues and tradeoffs, and it's clear to me they've "mapped out" the whys & hows for the Subversion design. (A whole chapter entitled, "Best Practices" is a GREAT SIGN that they have it figured out.)

We've also found it a very handy for configuring the Subversion server, advanced Apache integration, and for other "pithy answers" when you need detailed explanation of what are your options for some technical install/management issues.

It's an easy read, but with pithy info, in a nice writing style. It's good to read, and (especially the later chapters) are very handy as a "reference". The section on other tools, (e.g., Trac, etc.) is pretty light, but that's probably the best you can do since detailed description of other tools belong in other books.

Well worth the money. (No, I'm not affiliated with the authors or APress in any way.)