Tag Archives: svn

If you tried Subversive before, it’s time to try it again

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Helios’ Subversive release is a vast improvement over previous versions!  If you’ve tried Subversive before and didn’t like it, it is time to try it again.

For those who aren’t aware, Subversive is an Eclipse client for accessing Subversion.  In March 2009, I blogged about both choices of Eclipse client: Subversive and Subclipse.

Installing Subversive in Helios

  1. Launch Eclipse
  2. Help > Install new software
  3. Choose “Subversive SVN Team Provider” and “Subversive Revision Graph”.
  4. Eclipse prompts you to restart the workspace
  5. Go to Subversion perspective
  6. Eclipse launches the “Subversive Connector Discovery” for you to pick a connector.  I chose SVN Kit 1.3.2.  Be careful.  The latest versions of the connectors are not at the top.

New Features

All the new features are documented on the wiki.  The biggest things:

  • Subversive is an incubator project and in the Helios release train.  This means it was designed to work at the launch of Eclipse 3.6.
  • Better tag awareness – I can now do a compare with tag and see list of tags for project.  It is also fast.  Not CVS level fast, but that is because of the way SVN data is stored – something a plugin can’t do anything about.  It is faster than before which is appreciated.
  • Can compare by tag/date/revision or generate a diff file
  • Revision Graph optional feature (see screenshot up top).  This was pretty much the only thing I switched to Tortoise SVN for and now it is in my main tool.  It is also easier to use than Tortoise’s version.  It has the following features:
    • Handles tags/branches/etc
    • If you mouseover a box, you see author, date and full commit comment
    • If you right click a box, you can compare to the trunk (which it calls ‘HEAD’ oddly enough), show history or branch/tag from that revision.
    • The image scrolls well.

What is still missing?

It’s still a pain to look at all the changes to a file.  This is something that is easy in CVS, but not SVN.  It is better than it was in the past release, but still a pain.  I recognize this is a number of operations in SVN, but it would be nice if a tool could automate it.  Since none of the other Subversion plugins have this feature either, I can’t call it a fault of Subversive though.

Comparison with Subclipse

In fairness to Subclipse, Subclipse also has an optional revision graph feature at this time.  Most of the logic from my previous post still applies.  I still like Subversive “just a bit better.”

What’s next?

I think the big question is whether Subversive will get promoted to actually be part of Eclipse.  It looks a lot more promising than 18 months ago.

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See my review of Eclipse 3.6 itself.

Subversion, Subversion – what client shall I pick?

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Since I’m using Eclipse at home for development, it seemed logical to go with Subclipse or Subversive – two of the top three clients listed on the Subversion homepage.  I also tried TortoiseSVN the the other of the top three.  Below are my experiences with the three.  (I haven’t tried branching yet in any of them.)  All have had a release within the past month.  My comments for Subclipse and Subversive are largely from slightly earlier versions though.

Note: See If you tried Subversive before, it’s time to try it again for an update.

Subclipse 1.4.8 (released February 27, 2009)
Pros:

  • It seemed faster to checkout a large project with Subclipse than Subversive.  I can’t prove this as my internet connection varies, but I did notice this a few times.   Another person had the same observation though.
  • Has been around longer.

Cons:

  • No tag awareness!  When I want to commit a file, I need to think about copying the directory to the tags directory.  This is a mental jump as I’m really just thinking I want to create a version – not about how Subversion data is stored.  I also worry that it is too easy to accidentally create the version in the wrong place.  Why invite trouble?  The CVS Eclipse plugin just asked for the name of the tag.
  • Similarly, I have to think about where the tags are stored when comparing to a past version.
  • One common thing I do in Eclipse is awkward – I want to compare the contents of a file to tagged versions.  If I do “compare with revision” I see all the revision numbers and commit comments, but the tag column is blank.  If I do “compare with branch/tag”, I see all the tags, but can only select one to see the compare before starting the whole process again.  Also, you can only compare with branch/tag on a project level – which takes forever – at least over my internet connection.  As a clumsy workaround, we’ve been storing the tag name and revision number on our “release notes” wiki page.  This is an extra manual step that I feel should be unnecessary.  If the tool would just show the tag in the “compare with revision” view like Eclipse does, it would be perfect.
  • The proposal to become an Eclipse project has been withdrawn.

How long I used before switching
A few months.  It wasn’t until the project got into the tagging phase when the tag awareness feature became problematic.

Subversive 0.7.7 (release February 24, 2009)
Pros:

  • Can compare file with “working copy” (last checked out) without connecting to network
  • Since November 2007, has been an incubator project on eclipse.org.  This reset the version number which is why .7 is newer than 1.0/1.1 on polarion.org.

Cons:

  • Installing requires two parts.  The connectors are a separate install for licensing purposes.
  • As in Subclipse, I want to compare the contents of a file to tagged versions.  Using “compare with revision” is worse than in Subclipse.  it doesn’t attempt to show the tags.  More importantly, you must pick which revision you want to compare to, wait a while, view it and then repeat the entire process to pick another revision.  Not nearly as easy to use as the Eclipse version.  (If you think to open the SVN history view first, you get the Eclipse/Subclipse based view where you see them all at once.  It still takes forever though for large projects as it is seeing what else changed in that revision.  Turning off “deep copy” didn’t help matters.)  I didn’t try compare to with branch/tag because I didn’t see the option.

How long I used before switching
I started with Subversive.  After a few months a switched to Subclipse.  Then I switched back to Subversive where I have been since December.

I wasn’t thrilled with either of these so I then tried a standalone client. Tortoise SVN 1.5.9 (released February 27, 2009)
Pros:

  • Checking out one project wasn’t hard.
  • I like the GUI – very intuitive.
  • Committing was simple from Windows.
  • A very cool graphical release view for tags and branching.
  • I really like the log viewer letting you filter by date and or message.  It makes it easy to find out which version you want to compare with.

Cons:

  • It’s not in the IDE.  If not using an IDE, this isn’t a problem of course.
  • Windows only.
  • To tag a project, you need to be aware of the directory structure.  (See my comments about Subclipse for why this scares me.)  There is a graphical explorer to find the tags directory.

How long I used before switching
I just tried it for a few days.  I really wanted an Eclipse based plugin – was just looking to see if this was better.  If I wasn’t using Eclipse, this would be fine.

Conclusion

Both Subclipse and Subversion are usable Eclipse plugins for Subversion.  I prefer Subversive a bit and am going with that at home.  The main reason being tag awareness (I tend to deploy/tag on a weekday evening when I am tired and more likely to mess things up.)  I am keeping TortoiseSVN on my machine for the non-Java code checkins I need to do.  Note that you do have to pick one or the other.    You can’t point to both Tortoise and an Eclipse plugin for the same directory.  As a result, the last week of development on my home computer for Javaranch looked like:

  1. Sunday – Do a bit of Java development in JForum project using Eclipse.  Check out/commit using Subversive.
  2. Monday night – Generate the book promotion materials in PickWinners project by updating the build.properties and running an Ant build script.  (I don’t check these in on Monday since they are so easy to regenerate if something happens to my computer over the course of the week.)
  3. Wednesday night – Production deployment.  I wanted to get in some changes that would make sending private messages to the winners a two click operation.  (It took six clicks for each winner last time it was my turn.)  Tag JForum project using Subversive.
  4. Friday night – Pick winners for book promotion copying winners from web page into one of the files generated on Monday.  Commit using TortoiseSVN.  I like that I didn’t need to open Eclipse on Friday – picking winners is now a web page and the commit happened in Windows.

Many weeks I do less Subversion work at home.  It so happens last week was representative of the breadth of SVN operations I do.  I liked the split between Subversive for JForum (Java development) vs TortoiseSVN for PickWinners (Ant build and text files) and plan to continue that way. I’ll be interested to hear what my co-promotion coordinator uses to commit when it is his turn.  I’m not overly thrilled with either Subversion Eclipse plugin.  I’m thinking of pulling in the JForum project into another directory in Tortoise to use it for file comparison too!

This analysis isn’t so useful for recommending a tool in a corporate scenario where network connections are more reliable and projects are huge.  My suspicion is that Subclipse is better in that environment.  Especially if the majority of tagging operations are done through an automated build.