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To save anyone else poking around....

The file based backend (termed FSFS) came out in version 1.1.0 which was released on Sep 29, 2004. Since then, a minor bug fix maintenance release V1.1.1 has been released on Oct 22, 2004.

Subversion 1.1 Release Notes

(and State of the Project)

--snip--

Non-database repositories (new server feature)

It's now possible to create repositories that don't use a BerkeleyDB database. Instead, these new repositories store data in the ordinary filesystem. Because Subversion developers often refer to the repository as "The Filesystem", we have adopted the rather confusing habit of referring to these new repositories as "fsfs" repositories... that is, a Filesystem implementation that uses the OS filesystem to store data.

Note that the data files created by fsfs repositories are still in a binary format, and are not human editable!

Why would someone choose an fsfs repository over BerkeleyDB? The immediate and obvious advantages are the ability to access a repository over a network filesystem, and no more database "wedges" needing recovery. You can read the
full list of advantages/disadvantages at http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/info/fsfs

To create an fsfs repository, simply run 'svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs'. Or, if BerkeleyDB wasn't detected at compile time, 'svnadmin create' will default to type fsfs.

--snip--

run then svn dump command which will serialize your database into a text representation.

Run svn create --fs-type fsfs

and usesvn load to incorporate all the data into your new database.

what version of subversion, and how long has it been in release?

The file based backend (termed FSFS) came out in version 1.1.0 which was released on Sep 29, 2004. Since then, a minor bug fix maintenance release V1.1.1 has been released on Oct 22, 2004.

You can see the complete release history at the following web page: http://subversion.tigris.org/project_status.html

The nicest version control GUI I have ever used is SCPlugin, which is a plugin for the OS X finder. It overlays a small icon in the corner of the icon of every file under version control indicating its status, and provides a context menu for performing SCM operations. There are still a few rough edges, but the integration with the finder really makes it a joy to use - SCM operations and standard file operations can be done in exactly the same way.

I like subversion. why don't they? I found it easy to install the server, and the client is easier to use than cvs.

IMHO there are much better alternatives out there. I use Subversion at home and Perforce (definitely worth the cost) at work and I'll never go back. Source control without atomic commits really isn't much control at all...

Hm. Well, maybe. There have been a couple releases this year, and the mailing list remains active.

I kind of feel that the torch is being passed on to Subversion, with no hard feelings between anyone. Lots of folks are converting over and most folks seem pretty happy with it. But CVS is still widely used and there are a bunch of of gurus who hang out on the list and answer questions.

Oh, and here's a mirror of various CVS releases if anyone needs them.

What is wrong with subversion?

WSH (a brand new Windows shell, sort-of available now) may be an option, but you can just as well download Cygwin as someone mentioned and just use the tools you're familiar with.

--(())

WSH (a brand new Windows shell, sort-of available now) may be an option, but you can just as well download Cygwin as someone mentioned and just use the tools you're familiar with.

--(())

Subversion guys just did that and it is good. It is riskier, they are still coding but it is already very good indeed.

My company has used Scarab for over two years now and it's worked great. We use it for bug tracking and for our help desk. It runs just fine for us under Windows. It's given OSS a good name at my company, and since then we've started using more and more OS tools.

~ MSFT's SourceSafe ~.

I'm glad to see that one other devloper on the planet is using source control, but you really need to upgrade. Seriously, not even MS uses VSS anymore---it is the most unstable, feature-scarce, POS source control there is.

May I suggest Subversion/Tortoise?

The best part about SVN over VSS is that you don't need to worry about exclusive locks. If one programmer (or yourself) checks out something and makes changes, you can still check out a pristine copy, make changes, and then everyone can check back in (last one in has to do a merge) without worry.

On a dev team of more than one, invariably someone will leave something checked out and then take a vacation. With VSS you're pretty much screwed, but with more advanced source control this is no longer an issue.

~ MSFT's SourceSafe ~.

I'm glad to see that one other devloper on the planet is using source control, but you really need to upgrade. Seriously, not even MS uses VSS anymore---it is the most unstable, feature-scarce, POS source control there is.

May I suggest Subversion/Tortoise?

The best part about SVN over VSS is that you don't need to worry about exclusive locks. If one programmer (or yourself) checks out something and makes changes, you can still check out a pristine copy, make changes, and then everyone can check back in (last one in has to do a merge) without worry.

On a dev team of more than one, invariably someone will leave something checked out and then take a vacation. With VSS you're pretty much screwed, but with more advanced source control this is no longer an issue.

They have. It's called Subversion.
http://subversion.tigris.org/

In my systems and my company CVS has long since been replaced with subversion. This is a OSS replacement that fixes CVS's shortcomings (such as atomic check in and directory versioning) It works real well, i'll never turn back.

Thanks - the unusual Slashdot response that enlightens more about the subject than the poster :). Though I do think that you're nifty :).

Someone else pointed out other tools: ArgoML, a UML compiling IDE (apparently targeting Java, as well as C++ and PHP), and IBM's new version of Rational. ArgoUML seems more embryonic than Stateflow, though (if it actually compiles to compilable source) Rational might be exactly the "top layer" for flowcharting apps that are otherwise developed with the same tools (Eclipse, CVS, etc) we currently use. Any thoughts on comparisons?

ArgoUml provides a modular code generation framework. Currently Java is provided by default and there are modules for C++ and Php. The Java code generation works with the Java reverse engineering to provide basic round - trip."

And the Rational marketsprach seems to only hint at whether you can just compile your diagrams to source, then object, then executable, (in Java and C++) in one command. I've been trying to monitor the appearance of "compilable UML" for years (since MS bundled Rational Rose with VB5, 8 years ago). Has it finally arrived? Is the code it generates any good (performance, reusability, bugfreeness)?

Here and here. Hint: these days, we call it "UML".

Second, Apache 2 supports things like DAV which mean that to publish information on the web users need less access than with Apache 1 (such as shell accounts or worse FTP, since most ISP's don't think users should use SSH for some odd reason).

Lastly, Apache 2 can run Subversion. So not only can you use DAV to update information without shell access of any kind but you can version that information too.

[*] Why is multi-threading faster than the pre-fork model of Apache 1? Because there is less work to do when context-switching threads. A thread shares the same virtual address space with other threads in the process. Changing virtual address spaces is slow because it requires a TLB flush (as well as one or more extra registers to save). The TLB flush increases memory accesses.

but that's their call. Surely, there must be other alternatives than using something from M$. It's an installer - can't they use Nullsoft or something else?

MSIs allow for easy installation of programs across entire Active Directory networks. Sure, you can do this with scripts and silent installs, but MSIs let you do interesting things like per-user installs that migrate to computers with their profiles. A good example of this is TortoiseSVN, which I can install only for myself on a computer on an AD network, and when I go to another lab computer and logon it'll automatically install and yet still be visible to only me.

There's also a Firefox bug that's requesting an MSI installation option (but I forget the URL). IIRC someone built an MSI package using WiX, and several people have stated that an MSI package is imperative for corporate deployment of Firefox.

So yeah, there are alternatives, but using MSIs do make things easier for some people, me included.

C:\>cl
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 12.00.8804 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1984-1998. All rights reserved.

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]

C:\>svn
Type 'svn help' for usage.

C:\>scons

scons: *** No SConstruct file found.
File "c:\python23\scons\SCons\Script\__init__.py", line 794, in _main

C:\>cl
Microsoft (R) 32-bit C/C++ Optimizing Compiler Version 12.00.8804 for 80x86
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp 1984-1998. All rights reserved.

usage: cl [ option... ] filename... [ /link linkoption... ]

C:\>svn
Type 'svn help' for usage.

C:\>scons

scons: *** No SConstruct file found.
File "c:\python23\scons\SCons\Script\__init__.py", line 794, in _main

Subversion is a good replacement for CVS, and works on UN*X, OSX, and Windows (w/ command-line and explorer shell extensions).

I wrote about it here a few months ago http://www.gamesfromwithin.com/articles/0407/00002 6.html.

Fortunately, both those features are coming up soon by looking at Subversion's roadmap http://subversion.tigris.org/roadmap.html

Sorry, the previous link is wrong, you should use this one instead: http://subversion.tigris.org/propaganda.html Look under "Testimonials"

The apache webserver is switching to subversion. This was said in the mailing list post here and if you follow the thread it gives some good reasons behind using subversion. Examples from the original proposal include mod_dav_svn and mod_authz_svn which are Apache modules for web interface to the source repository.

Other examples include The Commons TLP and the SpamAssassin project which are projects of the Apache foundation are already using subversion. To see all the projects Apache foundation projects using SubVersion just go here

Useful links: Subversion homepage

Version Control with Subversion Book (mirror)

Take a look at the propaganda page on subversion's web site http://subversion.tigris.org/propaganda.html/

I assume you mean BitKeeper and Arch. There is also SVK. The homepage is a Wiki, which I find kind bletcherous, but I hear it is pretty good (I have no personal need for a distributed RCS). It's based on Subversion, which I do use and is excellent.

I dont know about Rsync mirroring, but if you look at the SVN 1.1RC3 release notes, you will see the following features:

Non-database repositories (i.e. not using BDB)

Symlink versioning (not on windows obviously)

many other fixes + improvements

... so it may be closer to your needs than you think

If you want a windows gui front end for SVN try TortoiseSVN, this integrates nicely with explorer and works pretty well.
I'd like a similar ability with Konqueror, but that's a long way down my to do list.
It'd also be nice to work out how to really handle the situation with working cross platform and case(in)sensitive file names...

Subversion 1.1 has support for a normal filesystem backend instead of BerklyDB. See release notes.

It's now possible to create repositories that don't use a BerkeleyDB database. Instead, these new repositories store data in the ordinary filesystem.

As to svn backends... I think it is prudent to point out a false statement made by Lord.

from: http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/info/fsfs/

"FSFS" is the name of a Subversion filesystem implementation, an
alternative to the original Berkeley DB-based implementation. See
http://subversion.tigris.org/ for information about Subversion. This
is a propaganda document for FSFS, to help people determine if they
should be interested in using it instead of the BDB filesystem.

and from http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.1_releasenotes. html
"Non-database repositories

It's now possible to create repositories that don't use a BerkeleyDB database. Instead, these new repositories store data in the ordinary filesystem. Because Subversion developers often refer to the repository as "The Filesystem", we have adopted the rather confusing habit of referring to these new repositories as "fsfs" repositories... that is, a Filesystem implementation that uses the OS filesystem to store data."

As to svn backends... I think it is prudent to point out a false statement made by Lord.

from: http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/info/fsfs/

"FSFS" is the name of a Subversion filesystem implementation, an
alternative to the original Berkeley DB-based implementation. See
http://subversion.tigris.org/ for information about Subversion. This
is a propaganda document for FSFS, to help people determine if they
should be interested in using it instead of the BDB filesystem.

and from http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.1_releasenotes. html
"Non-database repositories

It's now possible to create repositories that don't use a BerkeleyDB database. Instead, these new repositories store data in the ordinary filesystem. Because Subversion developers often refer to the repository as "The Filesystem", we have adopted the rather confusing habit of referring to these new repositories as "fsfs" repositories... that is, a Filesystem implementation that uses the OS filesystem to store data."

APR and GLib have slighlty different design goals. GLib is the low-level of GTK (desktop environment) and APR is the low-level library of Apache 2 (server-side).

So APR was designed to work in servers: it has support for memory pools, filesystems routines, network lacking in GLib. But GLib has support for GObjects, signals which are used heavily in GTK.

So if you're writing a portable server-side application in C/C++ then APR is for you.

PS: Subversion (the great VCS) uses APR.

No matter what media you choose, if the data you transport is of value - make sure you back it up. This makes it much less likely to be lost with catastrophic results.

I have a portion of my home directory in a version control database (I use the excellent, free and cross-platform Subversion). I have a copy checked out onto my Windows, Mac and FreeBSD machines. I also have a USB keychain drive that I sync onto whenever I need those files away from home. When I return, as soon as I sync up again, I can be sure that I how have all the changes I made while away.

A solution like this might be overkill (and not work well for large binary files), but it lets me take easy backups of all my code and documents (because they're backed up to the server whenever I sync - although since I don't care about the version history, just having a backup on another computer is enough redundancy for me) and easily keeps all the computers I use up to date with the files that I want.. without resorting to network drives (which are often complicated to set up and useless if I'm away from home with no internet connection).

Encryption is a whole 'nother topic, but if the data is sensitive, you might want to consider a portable device with hardware encryption (although usually software needs to be installed on the host machine before it can be accessed).

Or, a guide on setting up subversion and apache to do the DAV thing:
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/docs/TortoiseSVN_en/ ch03.html

For a true cross-platform build system, take a look at Scons, Subversion and Data Debugger - I've used all of those on Windows (except DDD), Mac, Linux and FreeBSD - and they're fantastic.

When I tried using XCode, I found it seriously unfriendly - the UI is bizzare and makes no logical sense. I ended up trying to use XCode simply for editing code, before getting frustrated and using Emacs to edit and the command line to build.

That's not all. Other J2SE apps that I personally use are...

• IsaViz is great for visualizing and validating RDF
• ArgoUML is a pretty decent UML editor
• FreeMind is a great Mind Mapping tool.
• Gantt Project beats MS-Project if all you need is Gantt charts.
• Protege is very impressive for editing OWL files.

Try Subversion. AFAIR it supports symlinks now, and is much better than CVS in general.

a versioned /etc is certainly possible. you might also want to check out tools like rcsvi (should be adapted to SVN, in this case)

cheers,
mitch

1. A dedicated QA staff. You should have as many testers as you have developers.
2. Tools for the QA staff to create their own automation. They don't like doing manual testing much, either, so they'll have incentive to use the tools. :-) I'll talk about the tools we use in a bit.
3. Training for the QA staff on the tools. Hire QA people capable of at least a little shell programming. And the tools they use should be not much harder than writing shell scripts.
4. A good SCM (source code management) system that provides atomic commits, so that when you fix a bug, you can tell your testers exactly what revision number it's fixed in, and they can get exactly that revision verify it in the same system you had when you fixed it.
5. A bug tracker. It doesn't have to integrate with the SCM, but if it doesn't, you should make it a hard policy that your commit log messages should say what bug number they are a fix for, and when you resolve a bug, you must say what revision the fix went into. I can't even estimate how much time this policy saves.
6. Automated rebuilds of every revision of the software. Spend a lot of time on this, it's key. It lets your testers test things the minute you fix them. That means, if you failed to fix it correctly, you'll find out SOON while the fix is still fresh in your mind, and you'll save even more time by not having to get back into the mindset of that bug. You will need special software to do it, so read on.

1. For us, our project has had 1-2 developers working full time (me, plus one additional deveoper at various times). We've also had 1-2 testers working full time. That sounds like a small project, but after two years of dev it is a lot of code, and all that code needs testing. The fulltime test staff available right from the start was absolutely not money wasted.
2. The development is done in Python, with Twisted, and so we used a combination of unit tests written by the developers and black box tests written by the testers. Because our app is primarily web, I developed my own web test system (having found no others that were suitable for use by non-programmers). This system is PBP, which is a shell-like scriptable web browser.
3. Our main tester had a little bit of C in school (she actually had forgotten most of it ;-) and a little bit of unix command line experience. This was more than enough to be able to design and build tests with PBP. Then I spent about one full day showing her how to use it and brainstorming testmaking strategies with her.
4. Subversion.
5. We've been successful with Bugzilla. If I had to start over, I probably would have used Trac, with which I've had good experiences on other projects.
6. I built a completely automatic build system using Buildbot to trigger the builds after each commit and A-A-P to script the build process.

It's all about subversion . Quite mature - can import former CVS collections, too.

I have come to notice that I was wrong - businesses are still as dumb as they where years ago and they still trust MSFT.

I'm the senior firmware developer at my company. I've been beating on our IT guy to set up a machine as a Subversion server so I can give it a test drive. He said, and I quote, "Why would you trust a free piece of software? Why don't you use Visual SourceSafe instead?"

You just can't argue with logic like that. Oh, I tried, citing numerous problems I've personally had using VSS in the past. Neither of us convinced the other, but he is setting up the server for me. And I'm not using VSS!

• Some kind of development management. I've done some consulting development for a graphic design firm which had a web-based system for tracking what projects were currently under development, where they were in that development, and who was doing what. Their employees AND their clients could see it, and everyone was completely clear on what was going on, and when it could be expected. They weren't a software shop, but they still had development tracking/CRM tools in place.
• Bug tracking. My current employer (a hospitality company) has a web-based system in place for tracking variations between "what the client expected" and what was delivered, and they actively use it to make sure the clients are well informed, and what they deliver is consistent with those expectations.
• Some kind of revision control. My current employer has a Wiki in place for tracking projects, specs and their changes. It allows you to see what changed from one revision to the next. Additionally, I'm using Subversion for revision control on the actual development. The huge employer had a good revision control system in place, as well; their use of the sytem "converted" me to the idea. If they develop software, and they don't have any revision control system in place (even if it's making a .zip snapshot of the development every so often, and archiving it), they probably won't last long. The ability to "roll-back" to a previous revision, and compare "then" vs. "now" is a wonderful troubleshooting tool.

For our development process, we manage all of our group to-do lists using SCARAB

This includes development, sales, business, and client stuff. Might be a bit overkill for a single user, but it's pretty handy for a web-based solution. You can also include attachments with the issues, and comments, so it's pretty good at electronically storing paperwork as well. We're actually using it to keep track of some of our corporate paperwork, etc., with offices in Boston, London, and Vancouver, without the need for expensive ERP or CRM software.

For now it does what we need it to do.

For other stuff, I use a personal WIKI, and/or the Omni Group's OmniOutliner. (Yes, I'm an OSX weenie ;)

It's not impossible, but there's nothing that's anywhere near as mature as Tortoise. Here's an early version of one for Subversion and here's a similar tool for CVS, also very early in its development lifecycle.

Though it should only be of minimal concern to an end-user, the license on cvsfinder may prove questionable. It's BSD-licensed, but it apparently uses unsanity's APE sdk, whose terms in my (non-lawyer) opinion may forbid this. The unsanity guys seem decent and unlikely to pursue this, but if you're thinking of contributing code to it, read the APE agreement very carefully and form your own opinion. Also, I do seem to recall some intention on the part of the devloper to switch away from APE (to mach_override IIRC) so, if this is done already, then it's completely a non-issue.

"Microsoft uses DCERPC, an extension of TCP/IP, as a transport mechanism."

and this is relevant how?

it is *another* protocol in the sense that nobody would be running it if it weren't for Svn

WebDAV is an open standard that plenty of products support, including your precious arch. I'd hardly describe it as a lame duck.

Note that now they've given up on getting everyone to install Apache2 and use DAV/SSL, the recommended protocol is svnserve, which was invented from scratch.

do you have any idea what you're talking about, or do you just make things up as you go? they seem to still think that DAV is still an option. And how is it possibly bad that they give you the option of a standalone server (as well as tunelling via ssh, or filesystem access)?

the same Anon Coward

But just to make things clearer here are the links to the advisories:
Subversion
CVS

I also put up a more clear description of the Subversion problem up on subversion site.

Take a look at Trac, by Edgewall. Trac is a well-done integration of a project wiki, an issue tracker, and a repository viewer, specifically for Subversion. It works well for me, so I thought I'd plug it a bit.

Regarding wiki markup, how much markup do you really need? Developers and DBAs shouldn't have an issue learning it, and designers and customers shouldn't need to learn it. They can write plain text without losing much. The point of a wiki is to facilitate communication, not to waste time with excess markup.

Your "presentation quality" documentation probably shouldn't be written on a wiki, anyway. The content, maybe, but not the actual, end-product document. With Subversion as a dependency, you already have a source repository, so use it. Stick your docs there, and let folks make reference to them in the wiki and the issue tracker. The combination of functions, wiki, tracker and repository, is much stronger than each separately.

And for the rest of us who enjoy using free software, there's the Subversion (also known as SVN) revision control system.

The article makes some moot points comparing BitKeeper to CVS - since I'm fairly sure anybody who's tried SVN would never want to go back to CVS. I now recoil in disgust whenever I have to access a CVS database - SVN's implementation solves problems in a much cleaner way than CVS and has far fewer rough edges.

Well it cannot be Subversion:

Some of that data is a few years old because some sequences, such as the Balrog from the Mines of Moria, appeared in more than one film.

Finding and moving the data for that sequence out of storage so it could be reworked for the second film took about three days.

Come on, three days to find some not-so-old files, from basically the same project? That's some fucked-up filing system they must have.