SubConf is the annual conference of Subversion (Version Control System) project community. SubConf 2009 is the third such event which was held in Munich, Germany from 27-29^th October 2009. Though SubConf is a User Conference wherein subversion users from various parts of the world take part, we do have developer hackathons in which subversion core developers come together discuss subversion roadmap, hack code, etc. The developers also meet the users to get feedback about subversion and also study the user needs so that the future releases can cater to user needs. This year we had a three day conference which was a great success.

We had 10 core developers of Subversion project at the conference venue namely Stephen Butler – Elego, Stefan Sperling – Elego, Neels Hofmeyr – Elego, Julian Foad – WANdisco, Greg Stein – Popular Open Source Developer, Hyrum K. Wright - Subversion Corp, Lieven Govaerts, Bert Huijben - The Competence Group, Senthil Kumaran - Collabnet, Inc, C. Michael Pilato - Collabnet, Inc. All the core developers were locked up (Hackathon) for all the 3 days in a room in the conference hotel where they discussed about various things related to Subversion development such as Working Copy Next Generation (WC-NG) library, usage of scratch pool, iterpool in subversion code base, release roadmap, interesting issues to work on, etc. Of course hackathon was not just discussion, we also had some real productive programming done, there were approximately 70 commits to the subversion repository with close to +46696/-36666 lines of change!

The first day of the conference started officially in the evening around 7:00pm with Subversion RoundaTable where users of subversion from various organization post their queries and feedback about Subversion. They also explored the possibilities of getting a feature introduced in future releases of Subversion. This was a fruitful discussion which brings in new requirements to the Subversion Open Source project every year, directly from the actual users.

On the second day of the conference we had many talks scheduled regarding Version Control Systems. The keynote was delivered by C. Michael Pilato who is a long term (from Jan 2001) Subversion developer. He spoke on the history of Subversion, the way the community works, why CollabNet chose to make Subversion a Open Source Project etc. This was refreshing to see the legacy and the advancements that had gone through in the Subversion Community through the years! The Subversion developers would like (which also forms the message from subversion developers via the conference) the users to do real testing of the pre-release versions (we don't want you to try on production data, though) of Subversion software to catch bugs early and due to the difficulty developers face (mainly due to computing resources) in order to mimic the varied environments in which subversion is deployed in organizations. The developers are interested to hear from organizations which are interested in offering resources to work on testing Subversion and welcome any such potential prospects. The users requested accessibility for pre-release version of Subversion binaries which the Subversion community is not engaged in providing other than the source tarballs, but the developers took a note of it, that they will work on some mechanism to get it done in future. FWIW, Subversion project in the recent past has started providing nightly tarballs of latest trunk development sources - http://orac.ece.utexas.edu/pub/svn/nightly/

Some of the talks given on the second day and third day of the conference were as follows (there were even more talks, but they were non-English):

• Subversion Release Process by Hyrum Wright (Release manager of Subversion project) and Stefan Sperling

• Bringing Subversion to the Java (TM) World by Alexander Kitaev and Alexander Sinyushkin

• WC-NG (Subversion's new working copy management library) by Hyrum Wright

• Comparing Apples to Oranges – Subversion, git and Mercurial by Stefan Sperling and Stephen Butler

• Moving from SVN to Mercurial by Zsolt Koppany and Janos Koppany

• Server Side Java bindings for Suvbersion by Dave Brown

• SVN Obliterate by Julian Foad

• Coding Control by Tony Smith from Perforce Software

See http://2009.subconf.de/vortraege/1-konferenztag/ , http://2009.subconf.de/vortraege/2-konferenztag/ for presentation slides.

Another interesting take away from the conference was Subversion Community's feeling about Distributed Version Control Systems (DVCS). The community is excited about DVCS, since we are part of advancing the “State of the Art” and we are happy that, ultimately we have competitors in the version control world :) With the latest improvements on WC-NG library, Subversion will be able to get features like offline commits, shelving, etc which are premature to talk now, but are possible in the foreseeable future.

It was a nice experience for me to lurk around with the Subversion Developers at the Conference, whom I ve known for the past 2 years via email communication. We also had a surprise on the following week after the conference with the announcement made at ApacheCon 2009, about Subversion project finding a new home in Apache Software Foundation! With such kind of announcements and user conferences Subversion Community advances in a faster pace to make this extraordinary piece of Version Control software even better!

Related links

Detailed Report - Day1

Detailed Report - Day2

Detailed Report - Day3

Pictures - Day1

Pictures - Day2

Pictures - Day3

SubConf website

One of our customers reported a funny issue with the pre-lock.bat hook script. Yes, when he used Subversion Server on Windows system. The customer is using a custom pre-lock.bat script to explicitly lock the file before every commit.

Why does he explicitly lock the file while svn commit itself locks the file implicitly? He has a valid reason to do so.

In earlier releases (v1.6), Subversion discarded the stdout messages printed in hook scripts. It is applicable for all hook scripts including pre-lock.bat script. Starting with v1.6, it behaves the same with all hook scripts, except the pre-lock.bat script. The message printed in this hook script is used as a UID for the lock. It should be unique across the repository. The best part about Subversion is that it is clearly documented in the Subversion 1.6 Release Notes.

Guess what? The customer complained that the custom pre-lock.bat script worked very well in prior releases, but it do not work with Subversion 1.6. When he performed a file commit, he faced a 423 Locked Error error. We attempted to release the lock obtained by a different user, if any, using svnadmin rmlocks and svn unlock --force commands, but they did not help. When we investigated if it has to do with any stdout messages, we discovered that NO it didn't. The hook script does not print any message to stdout.

WHERE THE PROBLEM EXISTS?

The issue is that the customer has set echo on globally in his Windows system. It prints all the commands we execute in the hook script to stdout, including the comments as in rem command.

The solution is to set echo off in his system, and he no longer faces the problem!

At CollabNet we have been discussing the differences and similarities between the Open Source community, and the Enterprise community. We want to be sensitive to that fine line between information awareness and marketing, without falling to one side or the other. Some people at CollabNet are hesitant to point to anything that costs money to the Open Source community for fear of offending, yet much of the content could indeed be very useful in shortening that learning curve.

As someone who is also helping to maintain the CollabNet site, and as Community Manager, I needed to learn what I needed to know as quickly as possible. I am not only learning to use Subversion, but I’m also learning to use the collaborative tools provided by TeamForge.You can see the tools of CEE if you look at any project on openCollabNet. We will be upgrading the site to TeamForge in the future.

Yes, we eat our own dog food, so to speak, and I’m glad. I have been impressed with the functionality and the ease of use of this platform compared to others I have used. To shorten my learning curve I have found some great training through articles, white papers, webinars, and web courses.

It is my hope that the resources I list below help to shorten your learning curve, no matter whether you want to stick with only the free materials or the ones that we charge for.

For those of you who are Subversion experts, you can stop reading here, though I value your opinion and experience and would appreciate any comments or suggestions you’d like to make. Also, some of you may not be aware of the variety collaboration tools that TeamForge provides.

Newsletters

Many bypass this option when registering for CollabNet, but the newsletter can point to useful information about learning Subversion, as well as other content you might not want to miss. You can subscribe by clicking on your user name at the top of the CollabNet site. Once in your profile, scroll down and click the Newsletter box. Or you can read the archived newsletters.

Webinars

Webinars are a great way of seeing software in action, and hearing information about the tools. Be sure to be logged into the site so you don't need to fill in any forms.

• What's New in Subversion 1.6
• Subversion Best Practices
• CollabNet TeamForge The Power of Centralization

Discussion Forums

Discussion forums are an excellent place to ask questions that fellow developers and users can answer. Be sure to return the favor by answering the questions when you can provide solutions based on your own experience. You'll need to be logged in to participate.

• Subversion for Admins
• Subversion End Users & Developers

Release Notes, Data Sheets, and Articles

We also have some good notes, data sheets, and articles. Be sure you are logged in so you needn't fill out contact information.

• Subversion 1.6
• Browsing a Subversion or CVS Repository
• CollabNet Subversion Datasheet
• CollabNet Training for Subversion

Training Courses

CollabNet offers a complete, role-based training curriculum across the entire CollabNet product line. Courses are delivered in a number of formats to best meet your education needs.

Subversion 1.5 - Individual Modules:

• Subversion 1.5 for Developers - Section 01 - Introduction to Version Control (10 min) - $28
• Subversion 1.5 for Developers - Section 02 - Introducing Subversion (19 min) - $28
• Subversion 1.5 for Developers - Section 03 - Global Revisioning and Working Copies (21 min) - $38
• Subversion 1.5 for Developers - Section 04 - Standard Work Cycle (33 min) - $38
• See More . . .

Instructor Led Courses

• Subversion 1.6 for Developers - Standard
• Subversion 1.6 for Developers - Enterprise
• Subversion 1.6 for the 1.x Developer
• Subversion 1.6 for Administrators
• See More . . .

FAQs

FAQs are probably one of the best free resources you can read for learning about Subversion.

• Subversion Client FAQ
• Subversion Server FAQ
• Subversion Migration FAQ

As I discover more resources for learning Subversion and TeamForge, I will write new blogs, and add to the newsletter as I discover.

Enjoy your Subversion learning path!

The core Subversion developers got together to address the current and future roadmap of Subversion. Follow along with the Subversion Developer Summit at the svn-summit project and live-blogging streams. See below for some photos.

The Subversion project has issued a beta1 release on the path to the final GA. The next release will likely be rc1 but, as always, that depends on the feedback we get from testers.

CollabNet has created binaries for Linux, Windows and Solaris (with OS X coming soon) from this beta1.  A noteworthy change as we get closer to RC1 is that we are now providing our CollabNet Subversion packaging for all three platforms. Solaris and Windows are new with this beta release. In addition, for all three of these platforms the server installation can automatically install and configure ViewVC as part of the server installation.

You can download these binaries from openCollabNet. There are also updated versions of the CollabNet Merge Client, Subclipse and TortoiseSVN available on this site.

We have a forum where you can post questions, comments or problems that you encounter using this version. If after some discussion a report is indeed deemed a defect, we forward the bug to the Subversion community using their normal processes. Feedback on the GUI merge clients will go to CollabNet Engineering.

For those that missed the announcement of the Alpha2 release, here are a few things to be aware of:

• Subversion 1.5 client has an updated working copy format. Once an SVN 1.5 client updates a working copy it will be converted to the new format. This means that older SVN clients will no longer be able to read these working copies. So either be careful, or be sure to update all your clients to the same version. There is a Python script that you can use to downgrade your working copy to the 1.4 format.
• Subversion 1.5 server can be used to serve an existing repository, but you will not be able to use the new merge tracking features with this repository until it is upgraded. You have a few options here:
1. Dump existing repository, then create a new repository using the 1.5 binaries and load the dump file.
2. Create a new repository using 1.5 binaries and use svnsync 1.5 binary to transfer the contents to the new repository.
3. Run a new command svnadmin upgrade to upgrade an existing repository. This runs fast as it just updates the internal repository format. There are some downsides to this approach though:
• SVN 1.5 repositories maintain a new index called the node-origins index  This is needed to speed up certain merge operations. The index will be lazy-populated on upgraded repositories, but can be updated on demand by running a new tool named svn-populate-node-origins-index(.exe). If you have a large repository you will likely want to populate the index. New repositories, or ones that are dumped/loaded or svnsync'ed will not need this.
• For fsfs repositories, the node-origins index will be slightly faster and take up less disk space if the repository is reloaded or synced. For existing repositories, the index has to be maintained in a separate set of files that takes up extra disk space and I/O.
• For new 1.5 fsfs repositories, there is a new sharding mechanism for storing revisions on disk. Instead of storing all revisions in one single directory, they are now spread across multiple directories which will be better on certain filesystems.  There is a Python script you can run to shard an exising fsfs repository though.
4. If you were using an earlier version of the 1.5 binaries, note that the on-disk format of the repository has been changed in the most recent builds. You should dump your repository with your current binaries, then install the new binaries, create a new repository and load the repository.

Please take the opportunity to give these beta versions on the path to GA a try. Your feedback will lead to a better final release and likely also help us deliver Subversion 1.5 as soon as possible.