CollabNet unveils SCM tool

LONDON/BRISBANE: The CollabNet-sponsored Subversion open source community has announced the general availability of Subversion1.5, Software Configuration Management (SCM) tool for managing software development and maintenance across distributed teams.

Highly anticipated by both individual and enterprise users, Subversion 1.5 includes key features and functionality to help drive developer productivity including:

- Merge tracking for more automated and efficient branch management;
- Sparse checkouts to enable users to check out only a portion of a source tree to reduce the total footprint on their individual workstations;
- Repository sharding and partitioning, to more efficiently distribute repository storage across filesystem resources and to improve server performance;
- A proxying system for spreading read-load across multiple repository servers for improved performance.

As the most requested feature, merge tracking and its related functions, mark a significant change in the way developers use Subversion for distributed development. Interactive conflict resolution enables users to proactively resolve issues during the merge process. Merge history and annotated logs provide additional information not available in previous Subversion releases, allowing users to query for available changes on different lines of development, and making it easier to back out changes.

Subversion 1.5 offers both command line and API access to these operations.

“Measuring by new features alone, Subversion 1.5 is our biggest release since version 1.0 became available in February 2004,” said Karl Fogel, president of the non-profit Subversion Corporation. “In Subversion 1.5, we made a conscious effort to integrate ideas from both individual and corporate users. That process worked quite well, and we will probably continue to use it for future development.”

CollabNet’s commitment to Subversion developers:

Marking another significant contribution to the open source community, CollabNet, the company that started the Subversion open source project in 2000, also announced plans to open source its customized merge client that is designed to let users tap into the new merge-related features through a graphical user interface. The merge client will be available for both Eclipse and Microsoft Visual Studio.

“CollabNet is excited to see the breadth and depth of changes that the community has incorporated into Subversion 1.5,” said Tony de la Lama, vice president of corporate strategy and marketing at CollabNet. “As the principle sponsor and driver of the Subversion open source project, CollabNet is proud to be part of this movement and impact how developers collaborate globally. We congratulate the community for all its hard work on this significant release, as well as all of CollabNet’s partners who participated in our Subversion 1.5 Early Adopter Program.”

Subversion 1.5 can be downloaded from the company website.