Subversion is a replacement for CVS which fills in a lot of the limitations of CVS such as versioned metadata, and allowing cp and mv of files without problem.

It deals with changes to the directory tree as a whole, rather than CVS's changes to individual files, so that large changes can easily be rolled back.

My attempts at playing with subversion has been quite fascinating. The most important thing I learnt, is never try and version control a 1.1 gig binary file.

Subversion is considered quite alphaish at the moment, but I'm really looking forward to it being finished. -- PerryLorier

Subversion has just released version 1.0.0. I recommend you try it out. I've been playing around with it and have found it to be a nice alternative to cvs. :] -- ReedLoden

For detailed information read The Definitive Guide to Subversion. Also see http://subversion.tigris.org/