SVN, TortoiseSVN and Double Commander Woes

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I am a long standing fan of Double Commander and at my new workplace, I have to use SVN. On the computer I got when I arrived, source code was already checked out and TortoiseSVN installed. TortoiseSVN was working well together with the Windows Explorer.

But of course, the Windows Explorer is a no-go for me, so I installed Double Commander. But – what a pity – TortoiseSVN’s icon overlays were not shown in Double Commander and most of its entries lacked from the popup menu.

Long Story Made Short

  • SVN 1.7 introduced substantial changes to their working copy internals. These make it impossible for a TortoiseSVN which has been built to work with an older version to work with SVN 1.7 and higher. And vice versa.
    • There is no backward compatibility. A newer TortoiseSVN won’t work with an older checkout. If you are new to SVN, this is really surprising.
  • 64bit shell extensions do not work with 32bit executables.
  • It is not possible to install a 32bit TortoiseSVN onto a 64bit machine.
  • SVN’s manuals are excellent. Read the manual. Try the Go for a test drive, if things don’t work.