Subversion 1.4 Slips Onto The Web

The latest version of the popular alternative versioning system to CVS recently emerged with some new features.

The Subversion project has released a new iteration of their version control software. Subversion has been billed as an improvement to CVS, retaining most of that project’s features while adding other compelling ones.

Recently, Subversion’s 1.4 release arrived online. Several new features have been listed for the version control system:

•  svnsync, a new repository mirroring tool

•  More than 40 new bugfixes
“Synsync provides the ability to replicate history from one repository to another,” according to the release notes. “The replication can happen all at once, or can be done incrementally through repeated ‘sync’ operations.”

“Because the tool uses the abstract network (RA) API, the source and destination repositories can be either local, remote, or any combination thereof.”

Developers working against a BerkeleyDB 4.4 back-end should see some improvement considering a problem in previous releases of Subversion. “Subversion 1.4 can now be compiled against BerkeleyDB 4.4, which has a new “auto-recovery” feature.”

“If a Subversion server process crashes and leaves the repository in an inconsistent state, the next process which attempts to access the repository will notice the problem, grab exclusive control of the repository, and automatically recover it.”

Since the crashed server processes could leave BerkeleyDB 4.4 “wedged,” the changes available in Subversion 1.4 should make those repositories “wedge-free” in theory. After all, few developers want to get a wedgie when they sit down to code.

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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.