I just got an outsourced subversion hosting solution for use in my company. I use subversion on a irregular basis in context of the Copenhagen Perl Mongers, so I do not get my hands too dirty, but sure expect to now, so are there any hacks, recommendations etc. I should know?
The goal is of course to end up using SVK, but I take one step at a time.
Thanks,
jonasbn
There's good news, and there's bad news
Alias on 2006-09-07T23:45:14
The Good News:
It's SO much easier to work with at a tool and people level.
Everything has a URI! I've ever been releasing to CPAN by giving PAUSE an upload URI and having it pull the file straight out of the repository. Release tarballs all have URIs.
You can checkout anon, and then it will automatically change to a user/pass account if needed when checking in. And so on, and so forth.
The Bad News:
There are no tags. No really. Tags are implemented by making a complete copy of your project into another directory, and the idea that it's a "tag" is implemented as "policy". That is, it only exists in your head, and there's nothing enforced on the server to make it a tag.
To make a tag, you use the "svn copy" command.
There are no branches. No really. Branches are also implemented by making a complete copy of your project into another directory, and the idea that it's a "branch" is implemented only in your head as well. There's nothing enforced.
In fact, this basically means that you can copy a project, and it becomes a tag... except if you commit a change to the tag... in which case... erm... right! It's a branch now!
To make a branch, you use the "svn copy" command.
You see where I'm going here...
On the plus side, the copying is free on the server. This is used as an excuse for why it doesn't matter than tags and branches are real, like they are in CVS.
On the downside, the copying is NOT free on the client. So if you use tags and branches a lot, and you project is bigger than 100 meg, forget ever checking out the root of the project, because it's going to download and consume gigs and gigs and gigs of disk.
In short, forget everything you ever learned in CVS about tags and branches, because in SVN it's a whole different world, implemented in wetware and with no standards.
However, if you don't use tags and branches heavily, it's an absolute clear win to move to SVN. I've moved almost all of my repositories to SVN now, except for one important one that has 5-10 branches, and over a thousand tags, that would just explode in size if I put it into SVN.
Think of SVN as a plain versioning filesystem, something you'd build a complete VCS on top of, rather than being a full VCS itself.
Now SVK on the other hand, that shows a lot more promise. It's just that there's no GUI client (yet)
:(
Re:There's good news, and there's bad news
Dom2 on 2006-09-08T06:21:10
I wouldn't worry too much about tags and branches. It's mostly just a question of getting used to how subversion does things... For instance, checking out the root of the project is not generally required. It's much easier to just check out the trunk or branch that you're actually concerned with.
As to converting tags into branches, yes, this can be done easily by accident. I wrote a subversion hook script to prevent this -- it stops commits going ahead if you're committing to a tag. Shout if you want a copy.
-Dom
Re:There's good news, and there's bad news
jonasbn on 2006-09-14T16:17:41
We need that! - SHOW ME THE MONEY!
jonasbn
hold off on svk
petdance on 2006-09-08T01:40:02
You say "of course" about moving to svk, but I'd hold back. It's not necessarily a good thing. Unless you specifically need to be able to work without access to your repository, it's not worth doing.
I only have svk on my laptop, and only for airplane trips.
