Via Larkware News I noticed that Subversion 1.3 has been released. Looking at the release notes I noticed one thing in particular that caught my attention.

Official support for Windows ‘_svn’ directories (client and language bindings)

The “_svn” hack is now officially supported: since some versions of ASP.NET don’t allow directories beginning with dot (e.g., “.svn”, the standard Subversion working copy administrative directory), the svn command line client and svnversion now treat the environment variable SVN_ASP_DOT_NET_HACK specially on Windows. If this variable is set (to any value), they will use “_svn” instead of “.svn”. We recommend that all Subversion clients running on Windows take advantage of this behaviour. Note that once the environment variable is set, working copies with standard “.svn” directories will stop working, and will need to be re-checked-out to get “_svn” instead.

What this means for VS.NET developers using Subversion is that using Ankh to provide Source Code Control Integration (SCCI) becomes a more attractive option. One reason I held off on using Ankh is that it required using a separate build of Subversion. But now, I’m so comfortable using TortoiseSVN that I prefer it to using source control bindings, so I probably won’t switch just yet. The SCCI interface just doesn’t seem rich enough compared to the turtle and its shell extensions.