Subversion 1.5 Release Notes

Repository Format Changes

Due to certain improvements and bugfixes made to the FS library, the version number of the repository format has been incremented. This means that pre-1.5 Subversion tools that normally access a repository directly (e.g. svnserve, mod_dav_svn, svnadmin) will not be able to read a repository originally created by Subversion 1.5.

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.

The API for interactive conflict resolution is exposed via a callback function and the following new data types:

• svn_wc_conflict_resolver_func_t, the callback API itself
• svn_wc_conflict_description_t, a description of the conflict passed to the callback
• svn_wc_conflict_action_t, the part of the conflict description indicating what the merge was trying to do
• svn_wc_conflict_reason_t, the part of the conflict description indicating the type of conflict
• svn_wc_conflict_result_t, returned by the callback as the result of any conflict resolution attempt

Clients provide their callback function to Subversion's libraries by setting it on the (new) conflict_func field of their svn_client_ctx_t, and may provide additional state to the callback via the corresponding conflict_baton field.

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.

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.