If you are going to run a Subversion server on Windows, you want it to run as a service. Doing so allows you to ensure the server is started automatically when the server reboots, and let’s face it, we have all had to reboot a Windows server once or twice. Running as a service has other benefits though too. For example, you can see if the service is running by using the Windows Management Console, even if you are working on a remote client. Likewise, you can stop and start the service from the console, again even if you are working remotely. In addition, it is a lot easier to script the stop and start of the server as part of your backup process; if that is something you want to do.

I recently wrote an article that was posted on openCollabNet that explains how to setup svnserve to run as a Windows service. This article describes how to do it using a new feature that was included in Subversion 1.4.