Subversion 1.5 Release Notes

Working Copy and Repository Format Changes

XXX: 1.5 currently uses the same SVN_WC__VERSION (8) as 1.4.x. However, some changes sussman and some other folks are considering for Merge Tracking may impact this. If these changes turn out not to require a WC format bump, remove this section.

Due to certain improvements and bugfixes made to the working copy library, the version number of the working copy format has been incremented. This means that Subversion clients earlier than 1.5 will not be able to work with working copies produced by Subversion 1.5. Similarly, the repository format has changed as well, meaning that pre-1.5 Subversion tools that normally access a repository directly (e.g. svnserve, mod_dav_svn, svnadmin) won't be able to read a repository originally created by Subversion 1.5.

WARNING: if a Subversion 1.5 client encounters a pre-1.5 working copy, it will automatically upgrade the working copy format as soon as it touches it, making it unreadable by older Subversion clients. If you are using several versions of Subversion on your machine, you need to be careful about which version you use in which working copy, to avoid accidentally upgrading the working copy format. This "auto upgrade" feature, however, does not occur with the new repository format.

Command Line Output Changes

Although the Subversion developers try hard to keep output from the command line programs compatible between releases, new information sometimes has to be added. This might break scripts that rely on the exact format of the output. In 1.5, the following changes have been made to the output:

XXX: Enumerate changes to output (e.g. for changelists).

• Conflict markers in files now match the file's defined eol-style.

Merge Tracking (client and server)

XXX

Sparse checkouts (client and server)

XXX: Described here.

Interactive Conflict Resolution (client)

Added support for interactive conflict resolution in the command line client, and a corresponding callback function in the client library. GUI clients can use the callback function to hook in a graphical conflict resolution program to the update/switch/merge commands. Example command line output:

    svn up
    U    contrib/client-side/svnmerge/svnmerge_test.py
    Conflict discovered in 'contrib/client-side/svnmerge/svnmerge.py'.
    Select: (p)ostpone, (d)iff, (e)dit, (h)elp : h
      (p)ostpone - mark the conflict to be resolved later
      (d)iff     - show all changes made to merged file
      (e)dit     - change merged file in an editor
      (r)esolved - accept merged version of file
      (m)ine     - accept my version of file
      (t)heirs   - accept repository's version of file
      (l)aunch   - use third-party tool to resolve conflict
      (h)elp     - show this list

    Select: (p)ostpone, (d)iff, (e)dit, (h)elp : t
    G    contrib/client-side/svnmerge/svnmerge.py
    Updated to revision 25685.

This feature can be selectively disabled by using the --non-interactive option, or disabled permanently by setting '[miscellany] interactive-conflicts = no' in your run-time config file.

WebDAV transparent write-through proxy (server)

XXX: A mod_dav_svn feature activated using the SVNMasterURI directive in httpd.conf.

Cyrus SASL support for ra_svn and svnserve (client and server)

XXX: Described here.

Changelist support (client)

XXX: Described here.

FSFS sharding

XXX: Useful for file systems which don't perform well with a large number of files in a directory -- see blog entry here. Migration script provided.

Copy/move improvements

XXX

Cancellation improvements (client)

XXX

Command-line client improvements (client)

• A --use-merge-history option to adhere to Merge Tracking meta data has been added to the following sub-commands:
  • log
  • merge
• A --parents option to create intermediate directories has been added to the following sub-commands:
  • add
  • copy
  • move
  • mkdir
• A --keep-local option to retain paths locally has been added to the delete sub-command.

Javahl bindings improvements

XXX: Should this go into the APIs section?

API improvements (client and server)

If you develop a 3rd-party client application that uses Subversion APIs, you may want to take notice of some new APIs:

• XXX: Enumerate specific new API additions (e.g. merge info retrieval?)
• APIs backing the new Command-line client improvements section have been added.
• Many APIs have been revised to newer versions.

Easier to try out experimental ra_serf DAV access module (client)

Subversion 1.4 introduced the experimental ra_serf repository access module for accessing HTTP[S] DAV Subversion servers. This uses the serf library instead of the Neon library which the original DAV support uses. serf supports pipelined requests which may lead to better performance. However, Subversion 1.4 required you to choose which module to use for accessing DAV servers at build time, which made it difficult to find out which module performs better for your usage patterns.

Subversion 1.5 allows you to build both modules at the same time; you can choose which library to use on a global or host-by-host basis by setting the http-library variable in your run-time server configuration file (~/.subversion/servers). In recognition of the fact that both libraries are DAV clients, we have renamed ra_dav to ra_neon.

Other bug fixes (client and server)

The usual slew of heretofore-unreleased bug fixes, more than 40 overall. See the CHANGES file for full details.