I thought I would take a break from my previous technical posts and give a general update about what has been going on in the land of CollabNet Subversion (our Subversion binaries).

We have been busy the last several weeks and the fruits of our labor are starting to see the light of day. First, a couple of weeks ago we released our Subversion 1.4.3 client and server RPM's for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. This was big news for us because it was our first 1.4.3 release and it had been bugging us that we were lagging behind. Producing the binaries is easy, but we created new packaging as well as additional scripts that we provide with the RPM. This took some extra time but now our build environment is complete and going forward it will be easier for us to stay in synch with the open source community.

Earlier this week, we released our Subversion 1.4.3 client and server packages for Solaris 10 SPARC. This was our first Solaris release and again it felt good to get it out the door. We spent some extra time making sure the build works the way we want it to but we sorted out any issues and the release sailed through our QA process. I know that I was pleased when I tested the Solaris version, installing and getting a server up and running is very easy. The extra time we spent paid off and like Linux we can now produce new releases fast.

Also this week, we helped kick-off a new area on openCollabNet that is providing "Community Binaries" for Subversion. The first binary release is for Mac OS X 10.4 PPC and Intel. Jeremy Whitlock, a contributor to this blog, deserves the credit for picking up the ball on this and running with it. He did a great job in both producing the binaries and in putting a lot of quality touches into the packaging. We will have more information on our plans and aspirations for the binaries project when we get the project launched on openCollabNet (within the next two weeks or so). For now, you OS X users, go download the binaries and let us know how it goes for you.

Finally, there is the Windows installer for CollabNet Subversion. Our current version is 1.4.2 and uses InstallAnywhere, a Java-based installer that adds a lot of heft to the download size because it includes a JRE. We are moving away from that to a Windows-specific installer. We are also adding a lot of new features to the installer such as installing the server as a Windows service as part of the install process. It is taking some time to get these features implemented correctly and QA-ed but in the end it will be worth it. We should have the final version out in a couple of weeks. Most likely it will be for Subversion 1.4.4 as that should be released between now and then and creating the binaries themselves is not the issue for us.