To work with Subversion within Eclipse, you'll need one of two major plugins: Subversive or Subclipse. I use one at home and one at work. Subclipse seems to be a little easier to set up on Mac OS X, as it doesn't require a non-default client. I also like its status icons a little better. It does blow my mind, though, that neither were included as part of the PDT All-In-One, much less Eclipse Europa as a whole. Subversion is pretty standard for open source development now.

Once you have a plugin installed, the rest of the process is almost the same for either one. Click on images to see larger versions.

Before you do anything else, even create a project, you need to import your project using your preferred Subversion plugin. Use File > Import... to do this.

Then, in the resulting dialog, find your plugin's import method. With Subclipse, it's under "Other," and with Subversive it's under "Team." Select it, then click Next.

Then either create or use a previous repository. This will vary a lot depending on how your Subversion repository is set up. I had previously set up my company's repository, so I'll use it here. Again, you need to explicitly select it and click Next.

Select the directory in your repository that has the branch you want to check out. Select it, then click Finish.

For me, the next step was critical. Choose "Check out as a project configured using the New Project Wizard." Otherwise, you won't get a PHP project with all the PHP-specific goodies that entails. Click "Next."

Then, fill out your project name and any settings and include paths as normal. When you're done, click "Finish."

A scary-looking dialog will appear, warning you if you have directories with the same name as some of Eclipse's special directories, Bad Things Will Happen. Unless you have lots of hidden directories, click "OK."

Finally, it will begin checking out the files from your Subversion repository to your machine. You can run this task in the background, but I find I rarely have anything else to do until it's done.

At last. Your project is set up. However, beware: at this point, if you do some configuration and commit your changes from the root level of your local project (done via right-clicking on the top project directory, choosing "Team" and then "Commit"), Eclipse will automatically add any directories it's created to your repository! Unfortunately, in the default PHP Explorer view, you can't see these files. You can, however, see any files you want to use in your local copy without versioning.

The solution is to click to the Navigator tab, where you can see Eclipse's hidden metadata directories.

Right-click on each directory, choose "Team," and then choose "svn:ignore" as shown here. Repeat this and the next step for each directory and file you don't want versioned.

Choose "Restrict by name" and click "OK." Remember, do this for all files you need to keep unversioned before your first commit, or you'll be sorry.

That's it! You're now ready to develop as you would with Subversion and Eclipse in PHP.