svn_1.2_releasenotes.html [plain text]
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<style type="text/css"> /* <![CDATA[ */
@import "branding/css/tigris.css";
@import "branding/css/inst.css";
/* ]]> */</style>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print"
href="branding/css/print.css"/>
<script type="text/javascript" src="branding/scripts/tigris.js"></script>
<title>Subversion 1.2 Release Notes</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class="app">
<h1 style="text-align: center">Subversion 1.2 Release Notes</h1>
<div class="h2" id="news" title="news">
<h2>What's New in Subversion 1.2</h2>
<ul>
<li>Optional locking ("reserved checkouts")</li>
<li>Full WebDAV autoversioning</li>
<li>FSFS repository back end is now the default</li>
<li>Faster access to old revisions</li>
<li>Many improved APIs</li>
<li>Many bugfixes</li>
</ul>
<p>Subversion 1.2 is a superset of all previous Subversion releases.
Anything in 1.0.x and 1.1.x is also in 1.2, but 1.2 contains features
and bugfixes not present in any earlier release. The new features
will eventually be documented in a 1.2 version of the free Subversion
book, see
<a href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com">svnbook.red-bean.com</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="downloading" title="downloading">
<h2>Downloading</h2>
<p>Subversion 1.2 is available as source code in three formats:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.2.3.tar.gz"
>subversion-1.2.3.tar.gz</a></li>
<li><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.2.3.tar.bz2"
>subversion-1.2.3.tar.bz2</a></li>
<li><a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.2.3.zip"
>subversion-1.2.3.zip</a> (Windows)</li>
</ul>
<p>For binary packages, please see <a
href="getting.html#binary-packages">the binary package
list</a>. Note that binary packages usually come out about a week
after the corresponding source release. The package maintainers are
volunteers, so please don't harass them — they know
when a new source release has come out, and they work as fast as they
can to make binaries available.</p>
<p>For other Subversion releases, see <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=260&expandFolder=74"
>this folder</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="compatibility" title="compatibility">
<h2>Compatibility Concerns</h2>
<p>Older clients and servers interoperate transparently with 1.2
servers and clients. Of course, some of the new 1.2 features may not
be available unless both client and server are the latest version.
There is <strong>no need</strong> to upgrade your repositories;
Subversion 1.2 can read repositories created by earlier versions. To
upgrade an existing installation, just install the newest libraries
and binaries on top of the older ones. (<em>WARNING:</em> if you're
using Berkeley DB repositories, installing a new binary distribution
of Subversion may force you to upgrade Berkeley DB as well, see
<a href="#bdb-upgrade">Unexpected Berkeley DB Upgrades</a> below.)</p>
<p>Subversion 1.2 maintains API/ABI compatibility with earlier
releases, by only adding new functions. A program written to the 1.0
or 1.1 API can both compile and run using 1.2 libraries. However, a
program written for 1.2 cannot necessarily compile or run against
older libraries.</p>
<div class="h3" id="output-changes" title="output-changes">
<h3>Command Line Output Changes</h3>
<p>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 1.2, the following changes have been
made to the output:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>For <tt>svn update</tt>, the paths have been shifted two
columns to the right, thus they start in column five. Column
three now contains a <tt>B</tt> when a lock was broken or
stolen.</p></li>
<li><p><tt>svn status</tt> adds information about locks in the sixth
column. Note that this column was previously unused, so the
old information is still in the same positions as
before.</p></li>
<li><p>Several lines were added to the <tt>svn info</tt> output,
containing lock information.</p></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="bdb-upgrade" title="bdb-upgrade">
<h3>Unexpected Berkeley DB Upgrades</h3>
<p>This is not actually related to the Subversion 1.2 release, but it
may affect you if you upgrade to 1.2 via a package distribution
system.</p>
<p>A lot of operating systems now ship Berkeley DB 4.3. Sometimes the
system Berkeley DB libraries can be unintentionally upgraded to 4.3 as
part of some other change pulled down via an OS package delivery
mechanism — for example, upgrading one's Subversion
package. If this happens to you, you will need
to <a href="faq.html#bdb43-upgrade">upgrade existing BerkeleyDB-based
repositories to 4.3.</a></p>
<p>In particular,
the <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList?folderID=91">latest
Windows binary distributions</a> of svn 1.2 (from Branko Cibej) now
use Berkeley DB 4.3. Please be warned!</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="known-bugs" title="known-bugs">
<h2>Known Bugs</h2>
<p>Subversion 1.2.3 fixes several bugs in 1.2.1 and 1.2.0 (1.2.2 was a
placeholder release and was never officially blessed). See the <a
href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1261"
>1.2.3 announcement</a> and
<a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=1202"
>1.2.1 announcement</a> for details about those releases.</p>
<p>As bugs are fixed in /trunk (the future svn 1.3), they will
continue to be backported to the 1.2 line for future 1.2.x
releases. 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">list
of open issues</a>.</p>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="new-features" title="new-features">
<h2>New Features</h2>
<div class="h3" id="locking" title="locking">
<h3>File Locking (<em>requires new client and server</em>)</h3>
<p>"Locking" is a long-requested feature, often known in other systems
as "reserved checkouts". While Subversion is still primarily a <a
href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch02s02.html#svn-ch-2-sect-2.3">copy-modify-merge</a>
system focused on parallel development, there is widespread
acknowledgement that not all files are easily mergeable —
binary files in particular, such as artwork, compressed files,
proprietary binary formats, or any other non-line-based data.</p>
<p>The goal of the new locking feature is twofold. First, provide a
means to force serialized write-access to a file. Second, provide a
communication mechanism to prevent users from wasting time on
unmergable changes.</p>
<p>This feature is now documented in the nightly build of the svn 1.2
book,
available <a
href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.locking.html">here</a>.
(Note that this link is temporary; when the 1.2 book is finished, the
URL may change.)</p>
<p><strong>Warning</strong>: if locks are in use in a repository,
then a pre-1.2 libsvn_fs library won't see or enforce them. This is
really only relevant to teams of users all accessing the repository
via <tt>file://</tt>. For example, an svn 1.2 client might lock a
file, but a statically-linked svn 1.1 or 1.0 client (accessing via
<tt>file://</tt>) will unknowingly ignore the lock. The workaround,
of course, is to set up a real server process — thereby
guaranteeing that only libsvn_fs 1.2 ever accesses the
repository.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="autoversioning" title="autoversioning">
<h3>Full DAV autoversioning (<em>mod_dav_svn feature</em>)</h3>
<p>Autoversioning is a feature whereby generic WebDAV clients can
write to a DeltaV server (like mod_dav_svn), and the server performs
commits silently in the background. This means that if you use Apache
httpd as your Subversion server, then most modern operating systems
can mount the repository as a network share, and non-technical users
get "transparent" versioning for free. (Of course, technical users
can still use Subversion clients to examine repository history.)</p>
<p>Prior to Subversion 1.2, mod_dav_svn had only partial
interoperability with generic DAV clients. <a
href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/apc.html">Appendix C</a> in
the Subversion 1.1 book documented the trials and tribulations of this
exercise. At most, one could use a DAV client to drag files into a
mounted repository, but the files couldn't be edited directly from the
network share. Some clients even refused to mount the Subversion
repository.</p>
<p>Now that the repository supports locking, generic DAV clients can
happily issue http LOCK and UNLOCK requests, and files can be
opened/edited directly from the share. As far as we can tell,
mod_dav_svn is now fully implementing the 'autoversioning' feature
according to the <a
href="http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/#draft-ietf-webdav-rfc2518bis">RFC2518bis</a>
specification.</p>
<p>In informal tests, we've had success reading and writing to
Subversion repositories via Windows Web Folders, OS X Finder, Gnome
Nautilus, KDE Konqueror, and other DAV clients.</p>
<p>To activate autoversioning, simply set <tt>SVNAutoversioning
on</tt> in your httpd.conf's Subversion <tt>Location</tt> block. Be
warned, however, that making your repository writable by generic DAV
clients may result in lots of small commits. A DAV client may seem to
be saving a file, but is in fact performing several write operations
under the hood, each resulting in a separate commit. Experiences may
vary.</p>
<p>This feature is now documented in the nightly build of the svn 1.2
book,
available <a
href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.webdav.html">here</a>.
(Note that this link is temporary; when the 1.2 book is finished, the
URL may change.)</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="new-switches" title="new-switches">
<h3>New subcommand switches:</h3>
<dl>
<dt><tt>svn log --limit N</tt></dt>
<dd>Display only N revisions, then stop. (<em>Note: a 1.2
server isn't required for this, but strongly recommended. A
pre-1.2 server will still attempt to deliver all revisions over
the network, even though the 1.2 client isn't displaying them.</em>)</dd>
<dt><tt>svn info --revision (-r)</tt></dt>
<dd>Show detailed info on older versions of items.</dd>
<dt><tt>svn list --xml</tt></dt>
<dd>Output listing in XML.</dd>
<dt><tt>svn propset --force</tt></dt>
<dd>Allow unusual propsets, such as svn:eol-style on a file with
a binary svn:mime-type..</dd>
<dt><tt>svn diff --force</tt></dt>
<dd>Show differences even on files with binary mime-types.</dd>
<dt><tt>svn checkout/update/status/export --ignore-externals</tt></dt>
<dd>Don't process any svn:externals during operation.</dd>
<dt><tt>svn export --non-recursive (-N)</tt></dt>
<dd>Don't export subdirectories.</dd>
<dt><tt>svnversion --help</tt></dt>
<dd>Show help on <tt>svnversion</tt>.</dd>
<dt><tt>svnlook diff --no-diff-added</tt></dt>
<dd>Don't show added files in the diffs. Companion to
<tt>--no-diff-deleted</tt>.</dd>
<dt><tt>svnlook propget/proplist --revprop</tt></dt>
<dd>Examine revision props, instead of normal versioned properties.</dd>
<dt><tt>svnadmin load --use-pre-commit-hook / --use-post-commit-hook</tt></dt>
<dd>Invoke <tt>pre-commit</tt> or <tt>post-commit</tt> hooks
when loading a dumpfile into a repository.</dd>
</dl>
</div>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="enhancements" title="enhancements">
<h2>Enhancements and Bugfixes</h2>
<div class="h3" id="xdelta" title="xdelta">
<h3>Faster access to old revisions due to xdelta compression
(<em>server</em>)</h3>
<p>The repository is now using the xdelta differencing algorithm
(instead of vdelta) to store compressed difference data. When you
upgrade to Subversion 1.2, existing repositories will continue to work
fine; the revision history will simply be a mixture of xdelta and
vdelta differences.</p>
<p>The xdelta algorithm is much faster at reconstructing older files,
and thus there's motivation to dump and reload your existing
repository. If you do this, you forcibly re-compress all repository
history using the xdelta algorithm, resulting in a noticeable speedup
in operations that ask the server to reconstruct older data: <tt>svn
blame</tt>, <tt>svn checkout</tt>, <tt>svn update</tt>, <tt>svn
diff</tt>, <tt>svn merge</tt>, and so on. Even dumping the repository
will be faster.</p>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> There's a small trade off between speed and
disk space. If you choose to re-deltify your whole repository using
xdelta, its size will grow by roughly 10 to 15 percent.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="fsfs" title="fsfs">
<h3>FSFS repositories are now the default (<em>server</em>)</h3>
<p>After the tremendous success of FSFS repositories since the 1.1
release, we've changed the <tt>svnadmin create</tt> command to create
FSFS repositories by default. This should provide a friendlier "out
of box" experience for new users.</p>
<p><strong>Note</strong>: Berkeley DB repositories are
<strong>not</strong> being phased out or deprecated in any way. The
reliability problems we've seen lie not in Berkeley DB itself, but in
the unique way Subversion uses Berkeley DB. Cooperative work is
currently underway (with Sleepycat engineers) to address these issues.
Berkeley DB repositories are still older and better-tested than FSFS
repositories in terms of scalability; the project still recommends you
<a
href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch05.html#svn-ch-5-sect-1.3">read
about the two back-ends in the book</a> and make an informed
choice.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="win32-password-encryption"
title="win32-password-encryption">
<h3>Cached passwords are encrypted on Windows (<em>Windows client</em>)</h3>
<p>On Windows 2000 and later, the command-line client encrypts the
cached passwords used for authenticating to a remote Subversion server
(via the <tt>http://</tt> or <tt>svn://</tt> protocols). Existing,
unencrypted cached passwords are automatically encrypted the first
time they are used.</p>
<p>This feature does not extend to stored passphrases for client SSL
certificates.</p>
<p><strong>Note:</strong> The client uses the standard Windows
Cryptography services to encrypt and decrypt the password. Among other
things, this means that the encryption key is managed by Windows and
can only be accessed by the user account that owns it. If an
administrator forcibly resets the account password, the encryption key
(and consequently the cached passwords) will no longer be accessible
(by the way, the same holds for the contents of NTFS-encrypted
files). The Subversion client will detect this and proceed as if the
password were not known; that is, it will prompt the user for the
password when necessary.</p>
</div>
<div class="h3" id="bugfixes" title="bugfixes">
<h3>Bugfixes:</h3>
<p>More than 50 new bugs fixed. See the <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/CHANGES">CHANGES</a> file
for details.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="developer-changes" title="developer-changes">
<h2>Developer Changes</h2>
<p>The svn_ra.h API has now been "flattened", essentially imitating
the same way the svn_fs.h API hides multiple implementations. Instead
of making calls into an RA vtable (<tt>ra->do_foo()</tt>), all RA
functions are now usable directly in the form
<tt>svn_ra_do_foo()</tt>. This also has the nice side-effect of
making svn_ra.h available via SWIG. </p>
<p>As with svn 1.1, a number of new 1.2 functions have been
introduced, and older versions are now marked deprecated (and will be
removed in Subversion 2.0). See the <a
href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/CHANGES">CHANGES</a> file
for details. The full list of new 1.2 APIs is <a
href="http://svn.haxx.se/dev/archive-2005-04/0319.shtml">here</a>.</p>
<p>There has been extensive work on the Python, Perl, and JavaHL
bindings. We also now have a preliminary set of Ruby bindings.</p>
</div>
<div class="h2" id="svn-1.0-deprecation" title="svn-1.0-deprecation">
<h2>Deprecation of 1.0.x Series</h2>
<p>The Subversion 1.0.x line is no longer supported. This doesn't
mean that your 1.0 installation is doomed; if it works well and is all
you need, that's fine. "No longer supported" just means we've stopped
accepting bug reports against 1.0.x versions, and will not make any
more 1.0.x bugfix releases (except perhaps for a critical security or
data-loss bug.)</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>