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.

SVN Tip: Making a local copy of a SVN Repository (with history) on Windows

This evening I needed a way of making a copy of some externally hosted SVN repository, complete with history before it went down. After searching for a while and only turning up results with how to do it on Linux, I finally found the solution.

http://iacoware.wordpress.com/2009/10/02/howto-use-svnsync-to-mirror-a-repository-on-windows/

Thanks for the tutorial "Massimo Iacolare". Works like a treat here.

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 Rant - Why is there no global "don't expand keywords" setting

After getting fed up with SVN's disgusting "merge" facilities, I ended up coding (and am still working on) Duality SVN which will eventually work around having to use them. But today, I'm getting fed up with the lack of a way to disable the "keyword expansion" facilities...

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 - 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.

Bullet SoC - Doing the SVN Dance - Part 1

In order to start work on this project again, especially on Point Cache support, I figured it was time to grab a more up-to-date Blender trunk to work from, since many things have changed there AFAIK, not to mention in a few other places too.

svn + ssh - A good tutorial for getting rid of those pesky prompts

Recently for Uni, I've been working with a SVN that only works with ssh login (the darned thing will ONLY accept a svn+ssh path), which inevitably leads to password prompts all over the show, every single time you do even the smallest of procedures with svn.

Having done this a few times over the past few days, I became increasingly frustrated with this status quo. Researching this a bit, I read quite a few tutorials which described ways to get around this, but the one I liked most is:
http://matttrent.heroku.com/articles/how-use-ssh-agent-windows-tortoisesvn

Thanks to this, I now have a really usable setup for this now.

Side rant on merging branches

Having performed merges on branches a few times (during last year's SoC, and also an earlier branch - "branches/animsys2") has not left me with a very favorable impression of this method of version control (in SVN at least. I'm not sure how well some of the distributed systems cope with this in practice, but perhaps it might be a bit better).

In my experience, performing a branch merge using TortoiseSVN + the Blender SVN server is a very dog-slow procedure. It takes upwards of 3 hours a pop, and often with no guarantees of success (either from choosing the wrong revisions, or connection failure halfway when computer goes on standby or otherwise). In contrast, simply updating from trunk or a branch and then saving out patches, gives nice 30 sec to 1 min updates to keep your sources up to date.

Keep in mind too, that these figures were from a year ago. It's now a year later, and the rate of commit activity on Blender's sources has increased (and so have the number of people accessing the server at any given time). Imagine what the merging times are now...


Given these circumstances, would you be wary of merging? ;)