Foreword A bad Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) sheet is one that is composed not of the questions people actually ask, but of the questions the FAQ's author wishes people would ask. Perhaps you've seen the type before: Q: How can I use Glorbosoft XYZ to maximize team productivity? A: Many of our customers want to know how they can maximize productivity through our patented office groupware innovations. The answer is simple. First, click on the File menu, scroll down to Increase Productivity, then... The problem with such FAQs is that they are not, in a literal sense, FAQs at all. No one ever called the tech support line and asked, "How can we maximize productiv- ity?" Rather, people asked highly specific questions, such as "How can we change the calendaring system to send reminders two days in advance instead of one?" and so on. But it's a lot easier to make up imaginary Frequently Asked Questions than it is to discover the real ones. Compiling a true FAQ sheet requires a sustained, organized effort: over the lifetime of the software, incoming questions must be tracked, responses monitored, and all gathered into a coherent, searchable whole that reflects the collective experience of users in the wild. It calls for the patient, observant attitude of a field naturalist. No grand hypothesizing, no visionary pronouncements here--open eyes and accurate note-taking are what's needed most. What I love about this book is that it grew out of just such a process, and shows it on every page. It is the direct result of the authors' encounters with users. It began with Ben Collins-Sussman's observation that people were asking the same basic questions over and over on the Subversion mailing lists: what are the standard workflows to use with Subversion? Do branches and tags work the same way as in other version control systems? How can I find out who made a particular change? Frustrated at seeing the same questions day after day, Ben worked intensely over a month in the summer of 2002 to write The Subversion Handbook, a 60-page manual that covered all the basics of using Subversion. The manual made no pretense of being complete, but it was distributed with Subversion and got users over that initial hump in the learning curve. When O'Reilly decided to publish a full-length Subversion book, the path of least resistance was obvious: just expand the Subversion handbook. ix