CVS marks conflicts with in-line “conflict markers”, and prints a C during an update. Historically, this has caused problems, because CVS isn't doing enough. Many users forget about (or don't see) the C after it whizzes by on their terminal. They often forget that the conflict-markers are even present, and then accidentally commit files containing conflict-markers.

Subversion solves this problem by making conflicts more tangible. It remembers that a file is in a state of conflict, and won't allow you to commit your changes until you run svn resolved. See the section called “Résolution des conflits (fusionner les modifications des autres)” for more details.