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<title>What Needs Doing?</title>
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<h1 style="text-align: center;">What Needs Doing?</h1>
<p>There are a lot of different things you can do to help Subversion.
Not all involve coding; there are plenty of non-programming roles for
eager volunteers.</p>
<p>Below are some of the needs we've identified, but please don't take
these as gospel! New volunteers bring fresh viewpoints, and one of
the most important things you can do is point out a need we hadn't
recognized before — and then fill it.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="summer-of-code" title="summer-of-code">
<h2>Summer of Code Tasks</h2>
<p>These are the ideas that the Subversion developers have for Summer
of Code applicants. As the above states, don't take these as
gospel! We welcome discussion on creative proposals.</p>
<p>However, please don't select tasks in the other sections of this
page as your proposal, as these are either not the right size for the
Summer of Code, or are downright not coding tasks, and therefore not
eligible in any case.</p>
<p>You should also read the <a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide to
Subversion</a> before starting out on a proposal. Don't hesitate to
ask for details or start discussing one of these tasks on the <a
href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>
mailing list (see <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList"
>here</a> for subscription information).</p>
<div class="h3" id="ra_svn_authn" title="ra_svn_authn">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1144"
>Issue #1144</a>: Add full SASL authentication support to ra_svn
(svn://)</h3>
<p>Right now ra_svn only supports the ANONYMOUS, CRAM-MD5 and EXTERNAL
authentication mechanisms. This is enough to be useful, but
integrating a full-featured SASL library would give users a multitude
of other options: passwords at various levels of security, Kerberos,
one-time passwords, etc.. The protocol is already designed to support
SASL, so the task requires selecting a SASL library and implementing
support for it on both the client and server side.</p> </div>
<div class="h3" id="text-bases" title="text-bases">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=525"
>Issue #525</a>
and <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=908"
>Issue #908</a>: Optional or compressed text base storage</h3>
<p>Subversion stores locally a pristine copy of the base revision
(i.e., the unmodified checked-out revision) of each file in the
working copy. These pristine copies are known as "text bases". This
is great for doing offline diffs, and for transmitting deltas back to
the server when committing. But it's a bit of a space penalty on the
client side, and it would be nice to offer users the option to turn it
off sometimes, or failing that, to compress the text bases.</p>
<p>This task is somewhat larger than the others (though still
perfectly feasible), and should ideally be taken on by someone with
previous experience in Subversion development.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="python-bindings" title="python-bindings">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2342"
>Issue #2342</a>: Improving the Python bindings</h3>
<p>The Subversion Python bindings are currently incomplete in the
functionality that they expose (for one example see the above issue).
Furthermore, the Python bindings are currently extremely unpythonic in
their structure, and could do with a layer of python code to make them
so. The bindings should first be brought up to date and all
functionnalities completely implemented, and second be wrapped in a
set of Python classes implementing an interface more friendly to
python developers.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="svnserve-logging" title="svnserve-logging">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2409"
>Issue #2409</a>: Operation and error logging for svnserve</h3>
<p>Subversion 1.3.0 added support for operational logging in
mod_dav_svn. That is, logging what actual client-side operations are
performed on a repository, rather than just logging the endless flow
of WebDAV requests. Support for this kind of logging, as well as
error logging, needs to be added to the standalone svnserve daemon.
This requires some work in the APR library, which would provide the
actual logging facility.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="nonrecursive-checkouts" title="nonrecursive-checkouts">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=695"
>Issue #695</a>: Fix nonrecursive checkouts</h3>
<p>It is possible to do a nonrecursive checkout in Subversion, using
the -N option to the checkout command. However, the working copy has
no proper knowledge of "I don't want this particular item", so many
operations behave extremely strangely in the presence of a
nonrecursive working copy. The working copy should be taught about
nonrecursive checkouts, so that it is possible to work with them on a
day-to-day basis.</p>
<p>This task is somewhat larger than the others (though still
perfectly feasible), and should ideally be taken on by someone with
previous experience in Subversion development.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="dav-performance-analysis" title="dav-performance-analysis">
<h3>Performance analysis tool for mod_dav_svn</h3>
<p>In order to drive future development, we would like to know just
how much a Subversion mod_dav_svn server can be pushed, and what
capacity administrators can expect when deploying their Subversion servers.
One option is to use the <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/test/flood/"
>Apache Flood</a> load tester. Test profiles will need to be written to
simulate usual repository use across multiple users. Then, load testing
needs to be conducted with the help of various profiling tools
(<a href="http://oprofile.sourceforge.net/">oprofile</a>,
<a href="http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/dtrace/">dtrace</a>...)
to identify the current limits and bottlenecks of Subversion. Bottlenecks
may be in <a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">Apache HTTP Server</a>,
<a href="http://apr.apache.org/">APR</a>, mod_dav_svn (Subversion's Apache
module), our repository backends (FSFS or BDB), or even the underlying
operating system.</p>
<p>The final output of this task should be pretty graphs, explanations
behind the graphs, tuning recommendations, and proposals to improve the
performance of Subversion. Time permitting, some or all of these proposals
would be fleshed out and implemented.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="svn-augmented-diff" title="svn-augmented-diff">
<h3>An augmented diff representation</h3>
<p>Currently, 'svn diff' outputs a patch in the so-called "Unified
diff" format. The problem is, this format is fairly old, and as such
can represent only textual differences between files. It does not
represent structural changes to the directory tree, nor can it
encompass changes to various metadata, the kind used extremely
frequently by Subversion.</p>
<p>Propose a solution for augmenting the standard unified diff format
with extra "garbage" chunks of data, that will be ignored by a unified
diff parser, but that can carry extra information about whatever we
want. Then, implement that solution in 'svn diff', and a new
subcommand ('svn patch' ?) that would do the opposite of 'svn diff'
with rich diff data.</p>
<p>Note that <a href="http://svk.elixus.org">SVK</a> posesses such a
rich unified diff format. It may or may not be desirable to reuse the
same kind of representation; that decision is part of the task!</p>
<p>Also, note that recently <a
href="http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/sussman/software/subversion/svnpatch/trunk/">some
code from the Dawn of Days</a> of the Subversion project has been
revived. It implements an XML (de)serializer for editor drive data,
which means it can spit out an XML representation of a set of changes,
and can take that XML representation and use it to "patch" a pristing
set of files. The other existing (de)serializer today is the one that
is commonly known as the "dumpfile" format. These two existing
implementations need to be taken into account during the analysis and
design phase.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="information-management" title="information-management">
<h2>Information Management Tasks</h2>
<p>These are non-coding tasks, so if you arrived here from the <a
href="http://code.google.com/summerofcode.html">Google Summer of Code</a>
pages, please see the above section.</p>
<div class="h3" id="issue-management" title="issue-management">
<h3>Issue Management</h3>
<p>Do we need an Issue Manager? Maybe...</p>
<p>The Subversion <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/project_issues.html">bug
database</a> has been managed in a rather ad hoc fashion thus far.
Periodically we make sweeps over all outstanding issues and try to
prioritize them, organize them into scheduled milestones, note
dependencies between issues, etc. These methods have been moderately
successful up till now, but they are not scaling well as the number of
issues grows. Since issue growth is proportional to user base growth,
the issue tracker is becoming a victim of Subversion's success. We
need to find new ways of managing our issues, ways that do not involve
making O(N) sweeps over the entire list of open issues at regular
intervals.</p>
<p>While we have some semi-formalized management roles (patch manager,
release manager, etc), we have never had an issue manager. It might
be time to get one, though. It's not yet clear whether the problem is
mainly one of attention, or of algorithm, or both, but having someone
dedicated to managing the issues database couldn't hurt. One thing
such a person could do would be to go through the list of outstanding
issues, figure out which ones are likely to be <a
href="#bite-sized">bite-sized tasks</a>, and mark them as such, so
that other volunteers have an easier time choosing things to work on.
We've already marked various issues as bite-sized, but we haven't done
so consistently as new issues come in. This means there are a lot of
potential entry points to the project going unnoticed. Want to help
us solve that?</p>
<p>Creative ideas welcome! If you'd like to help with this, please <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList"
>subscribe</a> to the <a
href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>
mailing list and post your thoughts.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="faq-management" title="faq-management">
<h3>FAQ Management</h3>
<p>We need a FAQ manager. A FAQ manager is someone who stays
subscribed to the <a
href="mailto:users@subversion.tigris.org">users@subversion.tigris.org</a>
and <a href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org"
>dev@subversion.tigris.org</a> mailing lists, watches for common
questions or addenda to existing questions, and slowly adjusts the
Subversion <a href="faq.html">FAQ</a> in response to the problems
users are having "in the wild". This is also a great way to get
familiar with Subversion usage patterns and common problems. If you
use or administrate Subversion anyway, helping to manage the FAQ is a
great way to expand your troubleshooting skills.</p>
<p>Again, creative ideas are most welcome. Please post to the <a
href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>
mailing list if you're interested in this.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="bite-sized" title="bite-sized">
<h2>Bite-Sized Coding Tasks</h2>
<p>The Subversion bug database contains many issues classified as
"bite-sized" tasks — tasks that are well-defined and
self-contained, and thus suitable for a volunteer looking to get
involved with the project. You <i>don't</i> need broad or detailed
knowledge of Subversion's design to take on one of these, just a
pretty good idea of how things generally work, and familiarity with
the coding guidelines in the
<a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide to Subversion</a>. Many tasks
are things a volunteer could pick off in a spare week or two, and
they're a great way to start learning your way around the Subversion
code.</p>
<p> If you start one of these tasks, please notify the other
developers by marking the issue as "STARTED" in the issue tracker,
then mail <a
href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>
(<a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList"
>subscribe</a> to that list too) with questions. Don't be shy, it's a
very civil mailing list.</p>
<p>When you're ready to send in a patch, see the <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/mailing-list-guidelines.html#patches"
>patch posting guidelines</a>. Don't be discouraged if your patch
goes through several iterations of review by other developers; this is
normal.</p>
<p>Here is the <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/buglist.cgi?component=subversion&issue_status=UNCONFIRMED&issue_status=NEW&issue_status=STARTED&issue_status=REOPENED&keywords=bite-sized&cmdtype=doit"
>list of all bite-sized tasks</a>.</p>
</div>
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<div class="h2" id="larger-tasks" title="larger-tasks">
<h2>Larger (But Not Necessarily Huge) Coding Tasks</h2>
<p>The tasks listed below are bigger than bite-sized, but probably
don't require new research to solve. In other words, most of them are
a <a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/S/SMOP.html">Simple
Matter Of Programming</a>. You'd need to either be, or be willing to
become, familiar with Subversion's internals to solve one of
these.</p>
<p>As with the <a href="#bite-sized">bite-sized tasks</a>, please read
the
<a href="hacking.html">Hacker's Guide to Subversion</a> and don't
hesitate to ask questions on the
<a href="mailto:users@subversion.tigris.org">users@subversion.tigris.org</a>
and
<a href="mailto:dev@subversion.tigris.org">dev@subversion.tigris.org</a>
mailing lists (see <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList"
>here</a> for subscription information). Before posting any patches,
see the <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/mailing-list-guidelines.html#patches"
>patch posting guidelines</a>.</p>
<p>For <a href="project_status.html#upcoming">groups of tasks tied to
specific releases</a>, peruse the <a href="project_status.html">status
page</a>. For a longer-term view of Subversion's vision, see the <a
href="roadmap.html">road map</a>.</p>
<div class="h3" id="error-messages" title="error-messages">
<h3><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1254"
>Issue #1254</a>, etc: Improve error messages</h3>
<p>Too many of Subversion's error messages are terse or confusing.
Many instances are recorded in
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1254"
>issue #1254</a>, but see also issues
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2302"
>#2302</a>,
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2295"
>#2295</a>, and
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2275"
>#2275</a>.</p>
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<div class="h2" id="bindings" title="bindings">
<h2>Improved Bindings to Other Languages</h2>
<p>One of Subversion's strengths is that it offers a rich set of
"binding surfaces": well-documented APIs that are available not only
in C (Subversion's native language) but in other programming languages
as well (see the <a
href="links.html#lang_bindings">complete list</a>).</p>
<p>Some of these language bindings are maintained via <a
href="http://www.swig.org/">SWIG</a>, a tool that partially automates
the process of generating bindings, while others are maintained by
hand. Many of the bindings do not have complete coverage yet, or have
interface problems where they do have coverage. So even though
they're used in many production systems, there's still plenty of work
to do. Specifically:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>The <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/bindings/swig/python/"
>SWIG/Python bindings</a> are in pretty good shape, but their coverage
is not yet complete. Help is welcome.</p></li>
<li><p>Our <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/bindings/java/javahl/"
>Java</a>, <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/bindings/swig/perl/"
>SWIG/Perl</a>, and <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/subversion/bindings/swig/ruby/"
>SWIG/Ruby</a> bindings are in pretty good shape, but maybe there are
other languages you'd like to call Subversion APIs from? Lisp/Scheme?
Feel free to start a new bindings project, if you don't see what you
need here.</p></li>
</ul>
</div>
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<div class="h2" id="all-issues" title="all-issues">
<h2>All Open Issues</h2>
<p>You want to see the complete list of open bugs, in all its glory?
Don't say we didn't <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/buglist.cgi?component=subversion&issue_status=UNCONFIRMED&issue_status=NEW&issue_status=STARTED&issue_status=REOPENED&order=issues.target_milestone%2C%20issues.priority%2C%20issues.issue_type">warn you...</a></p>
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