Hackers Beware - SVN 1.6 vs 1.7

This morning I've been trying to debug why the "From Existing Checkout" option in DualitySvn isn't working on the office computer (despite it having worked on every other computer I've tested it on so far).

Apparently starting from SVN 1.7 (computer in question runs 1.7.1), the subversion developers have gone and changed the format of the internals of the .svn folders. Well, they were well within their rights to... after all, those folders are kindof "private metadata" that SVN uses, that we really shouldn't be dipping our toes into! Having said that, it was kindof convenient grovelling around in there in the past.

Duality SVN - First Public Release

After some "production delays" delaying the completion of initial targets, today I can finally proudly present to the world the first official release of Duality SVN (http://code.google.com/p/dualitysvn/).

For the uninitiated, Duality SVN is a Subversion (SVN) frontend written in Python and PyQt for the SVN commandline tools. One of its goals is to provide a UI streamlined for optimal service of daily client-side version control workflows, making it easier and faster to concentrate on your core activites instead, be it developing code, writing documentation, or working on art projects.

The other (and original founding goal) was to provide a branch management workflow non-reliant on SVN's slow and fickle "merge" tools, which were a significant barrier to successful branch management for many users.

SVN Quick Tip - Enable AutoProps...

As part of work on Duality SVN, I've been periodically reading the SVN redbook and other SVN documentation to find out how to get SVN to behave in ways that I like most so that my tool will make things significantly easier for myself in the long run.

Today, while working on adding files, I noticed an option: "--auto-props" that can be used in conjunction with svn add. From the documentation, when set, this will automatically add SVN properties to files based on some pattern-matching magic.

Duality SVN - Self-Hosting Milestone Reached

Today has been a very productive day. 
Today is also a very important day.
Today Duality SVN became self-hosting.

Duality SVN in action, preparing to be used to commit some changes to it's SVN repository. It can also be used to update the working copy from the SVN repository, allowing for the basics of day to day collaborative development work already. Hence, as of this morning, it has "self hosting"! ;)

Duality SVN - Gathering momentum

Things have been getting a bit quiet here over the past few days, so let's dust off the cobwebs here!

Over the past week, I've been slowly working away on getting the Duality SVN UI up and running. Unfortunately, things have been going a bit slower than hoped (so this post does NOT announce the first public release as tentatively advertised before), as I ended up getting stuck for a few days trawling so-so documentation (and dissecting example scripts) before finally figuring out the necessary code to get a few core components working. In particular, most of this work all just went towards...

The "status list" widget.

(NB: The colour of the "external" status indicator is something I'm still playing with. I've been trying to get it as invisible as possible using the "predefined" colours as I really don't care about such entries much. Anyways, on second thought, the yellow seems to be a bit too loud still, yet grey makes it too similar to "Unversioned" which I want discrete yet still visible. Hmm...)

Duality SVN - First Sneak Peak

After a bit of deliberation, I've decided to release an little teaser for a little side-project I'm working on at the moment. Please be aware that this is still a WIP design, with a few things that I've already tweaked/added since when this screenshot was made.

This is the current UI design - version 3 to be precise - of a little SVN client/frontend that I've been working on. It spawned out of my frustration with regard to current SVN tools, especially in terms of branch management, which lead to an idea for trying to (hackily) get the best of both worlds.