No not auto equip. Would be nice if the game could look for newer version files and download them on it's own or something of sort ![Grin ;D](http://ufoai.ninex.info/forum/Smileys/default/grin.gif)
What newer files? Most of the changes involve code change so you need to recompile, maybe compatibility break so you have to restart the campaign. Such feature could cause a lot of problems we don't wanna manage IHMO.
You can set up a cron job (scheduled task) to update from svn, recompile for yourself..
-geever