I always respected the fact that the authors of Subversion, right from the start, structured their software as a library, with the CLI being a user of that library.
The way IDEs and GUIs interacted with CVS was to shell out to the CLI, which inevitably had problems with filenames with spaces, parsing of error messages, etc. Subversion understood in 2000 that the things were changing, and that the CLI was only one way you'd use a VCS. People were more and more interacting with the VCS via IDEs, or via right-click menus in Windows Explorer, etc.
I felt happy knowing I'd never again have to deal VCSs via tools just shelling out to their CLI ever again. How wrong I was...
The way IDEs and GUIs interacted with CVS was to shell out to the CLI, which inevitably had problems with filenames with spaces, parsing of error messages, etc. Subversion understood in 2000 that the things were changing, and that the CLI was only one way you'd use a VCS. People were more and more interacting with the VCS via IDEs, or via right-click menus in Windows Explorer, etc.
I felt happy knowing I'd never again have to deal VCSs via tools just shelling out to their CLI ever again. How wrong I was...