Features

Storing the full change history of tracked objects (files, directories, symlinks) in a centralized repository, including attribute changes ("metadata"), relocation, renaming and deletion
Copying objects with history branching - when copying two separate objects with a common history appear in the repository
Support of transferring changes between object copies, including the full merging of copies (in the working copy; without history merging)
Support of branching: creation of branches, merging of branches
Support of labels (by directory copying)
History of changes and object copies (including branches and directories) are stored in the form of linked copies - "cheap" (not time and disk resource consuming) during creation and storage
Support of competitive (including simultaneous, with isolation of transactions) multiuser work with the repository and, in most cases, automatic merging of changes of different developers (in the working copy)
Commits of changes in the storage (including multi-object ones) are organized in the form of atomic transactions
Network exchange between the server and the client foresees the transfer of only the differences between a working copy and the repository
Equally efficient work with both text and binary files is provided
Different options for storage access
The output of the command line client is equally suitable for reading and parsing
Possibility of storage mirroring
Two possible internal repository formats: a database or a set of regular files
Internationalized program messages (using locale settings)
Libraries for the languages PHP, Python, Perl, Java allow to embed the Subversion client functionality into the programs written in these languages.
Multilevel library architecture, originally designed for the client-server model.