Welcome to the August openCollabNet Technical Newsletter. Lots of news this month:
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- In September we will release CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0.
- The CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition was upgraded.
- Subversion 1.4.5 was released (it contains a medium-risk security fix for Windows clients, make sure to upgrade).
The case is clear, Subversion continues to be unstoppable. I blogged about it two weeks ago. The new standard for version control is now on more than 150,000 public Apache servers that report their mod_dav_svn module and CollabNet estimates that over 2 million developers now use Subversion. Subversion is also way past its initial goal of being a replacement for CVS. We hear from many companies that they are now standardizing on Subversion in favor of legacy commercial systems; systems that hinder rather than enable distributed development, are disliked by developers and are too expensive to deploy. Way to go Subversion!
If you want to share a success story about Subversion at your company, send me an email (ghaarmans at collab.net).
Best regards,
Guido Haarmans
Developer Relations, CollabNet
In this Issue:
- CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition upgraded
- New Discussion Services in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0
- Subversion reporting in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0
- Subversion 1.4.5 released
- Merge Tracking GUI client
- Branching and Merging Strategies for Subversion 1.5
- SubConf 2007
- CollabNet Subversion Starter Package
- Recent blog posts
- Webinars
- CollabNet News
The newsletter archive is at http://www.open.collab.net/newsletter/newsletter.html.
CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition 1.1
CollabNet just released version 1.1 of the CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition, a Mylyn-based plugin toolset that connects Eclipse and CollabNet Enterprise Edition for version control, issue tracking, build-and-test server provisioning and openCollabNet. Commit files to the repository, check which defects you need to fix, reserve a test server or search openCollabNet for a technical document, all without leaving your Eclipse IDE.
CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition is a free download from openCollabNet and contains the following key features:
- Project Tracker and Issue Tracker connectors for Mylyn. This includes both the core Mylyn 2.0 open-source plugin as well as our Project Tracker and Issue Tracker connectors. This package enables any developer to work directly with their tracking repository from within the Eclipse workspace.
- CollabNet Subversion. This integrates Subversion into the CollabNet Sites view. It is built on top of Subclipse, the open-source Subversion plugin for Eclipse. Future versions of the CollabNet Subversion plugin will build additional value-add functionality on top of Subclipse as part of the CollabNet Desktop.
- CollabNet CUBiT. The 1.1 release includes a new plug-in for CollabNet CUBiT users. This plug-in allows you to add your CUBiT Manager host to the CollabNet Sites view. From there, you can browse and access all of the hosts that are assigned to your projects. (Using CollabNet CUBiT, a geographically distributed team can reserve physical or virtual systems from a central pool of resources and rebuild these systems according to any pre-defined build and test configuration: http://www.collab.net/products/CUBiT/.)
- openCollabNet Search View. The 1.1 release adds a new openCollabNet view to the CollabNet Perspective. This view makes it easy to search the content available on openCollabNet and also provides quick links to some of the most popular destinations on the site.
For more information and to download the CollabNet Desktop – Eclipse Edition, go to http://eclipse.open.collab.net/. If you already use the software and want to know what is new in 1.1, go here: http://eclipse.open.collab.net/new/index.html.
New Discussion Services in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0
In September we will release CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0. This new version contains many customer-driven features:
- The new Discussion Services which will completely replace the current tools for mailing lists and forums.
- Subversion Transaction and Activity Reporting.
- A number of enhancements in the Presentation Framework component, such as WYSIWYG image support, Project Page restructuring and a Project Template admin UI.
- Project and domain level wikis.
- Additional Web Services APIs.
- Subversion enhancements: Copy permissions, Repository metadata search and ViewVC syntax coloration.
Discussion Services in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0
Discussion Forums and Mailing Lists were completely rewritten for CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0. Jeff Eastman - the principle architect of the new Discussion Services - wrote this introduction for openCollabNet members:
Our current project tools include both mailing lists and discussion forums. These tools provide support for asynchronous communication that is typical of globally-distributed software teams. CollabNet Enterprise Edition mailing lists emphasize email as the primary user interface whereas discussion forums offer a web interface. Both tools have similar features for handling threaded text discussions: the ability to post new dialog topics and reply to posts from others; the ability to use a web interface to search for particular messages; and the ability to subscribe to email notifications from those tools.
Combining Mailing Lists and Discussion Forums >> Discussion Services
While similar in function, the two tools have completely different implementations and this has led to a natural divergence in many areas. Mailing lists support email commands that users can utilize to manage their subscriptions, to moderate postings of others and to query the list archive. Discussion forums have similar but different web based mechanisms for performing the same functions. There are other more subtle differences as well. Because mailing lists live outside the secure world of project roles and permissions it is not possible to enforce the kinds of access controls that discussion forums can deliver. The worst part of the separate implementations is that customers cannot share their content between them. That is all about to change in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0.
The new Discussion Services offer an obvious middle ground that is the best of both worlds. Customers can now use both web and email interfaces to post messages, to manage their subscriptions and to view or be notified of new content. All of this is done under the project permissions and this gives administrators full control over who can access what content using either interface approach. With Discussion Services it is now possible to move an existing mailing list archive under our project security umbrella and tighten its access controls. Similarly, it is possible to take an existing discussion forum and open it up for less-secure email access as well.
New features for users
Registered users will now have improved insight into the discussions they are following. By subscribing to a discussion, a user will receive an indication of any recent postings to that discussion on the user's start page. A new form of start-page-only subscription has also been introduced so that users desiring only this form of web notification can select it without receiving any additional email. Users will also have the ability to manage all of their subscriptions in a project on a single screen, greatly simplifying the subscription management process. Guest users, while not enjoying these new features, will still be able to view, post and subscribe to discussions as before. Guest access to discussions is governed by the permissions assigned to the Anonymous Guest role by system administrators, so sites that wish to grant more or less access can enforce their local policies. Finally, the ability of guests to post and subscribe may be additionally controlled at the individual discussion level within the Anonymous Guest permissions granted.
New features for administrators
Administrators will also have improved tools for managing their discussion content. A new set of message filters is provided that allows policy decisions for allowed attachment types, mail headers and content filters to be made. These filters are available at the domain and project levels, as well as at each individual discussion. New administrative screens are also available for managing subscriptions, moderators and message deletion.
Upgrading
With the new Discussion Services, all existing mailing list and discussion forum archives will be migrated to a new common database format that preserves the richness of both. During migration to 5.0, additional information is recorded so that existing URLs that users may have bookmarked will continue to function. We have endeavored to make the migration process as simple and reliable as possible so that customers can be confident their information investments are preserved.
Send us your feedback
We are excited to be introducing Discussion Services in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0 and think our users will be just as pleased. Additional information is available in the discussion services project on openCollabNet as well as mailing lists and discussion forums for sharing ideas with our customers going forward. Of course, with CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0 these tools will also be migrated so users will have a chance to guide our discussion services future directions while they use them.
Subversion reporting in CollabNet Enterprise Edition 5.0
You know people are using your site, but how are they using it? What are the resources people keep coming back for, and what do they ignore? You need this kind of information to make solid decisions about managing your CollabNet site.
With version 5.0 you can create reports on Subversion activity across your site or in a single project. You can also keep track of uploads, downloads and lots of the other transactions that are the lifeblood of a development site.
As a site administrator, you can count up active projects and active users, information that can be important for an ROI calculation or a progress report.
As a project owner, you’ll want to know what users are committing to Subversion and what they are checking out, among other things. You can create reports on Subversion client transactions including checkout, update, commit, blame, diff, log, status, switch, lock, unlock and propset.
Do visitors grab a particular file from your site early in the month, or mostly on weekends? On a public site, tracking the number of file downloads from your site can help support decisions about which packages to offer for download and when to promote them.
A report can be a snapshot of activity at a given point in time, or it can track trends. You can also get an itemized list in text form. In either case, you have more information to work with.
Subversion 1.4.5 Released. Download now from openCollabNet
On Monday August 27th the Subversion community released Subversion 1.4.5 which fixes a medium risk security problem in the Windows client. For more info, please read our blog post. CollabNet has already released updated CollabNet Subversion binaries for Windows. You can find them at http://downloads.open.collab.net/collabnet-subversion.html.
We strongly recommend Windows users to update their clients. If your client runs on another operating system, you do not need to upgrade.
If you use Subclipse, you need to update it, instructions are on openCollabNet. TortoiseSVN was updated as well.
Try the Subversion Merge Tracking GUI Client
Later this year CollabNet will release a GUI client for the new Subversion 1.5 merge tracking feature, built on top of Subclipse. Within the next two weeks we will make a beta version available through the Merge Tracking Early Adopter program on openCollabNet. In this project you can find information about Subversion 1.5, there is a forum to discuss merge tracking, and you can download beta binaries, a repository with merge tracking history built-in and soon the beta version of our GUI merge tracking client.
If you want to be notified about the GUI client’s availability, sign up for the announcement mailing list of the Merge Tracking Early Adopter Program by sending an email to announce-subscribe@merge-tracking.open.collab.net. We will also notify you when we update the Subversion 1.5 beta binaries, which should be sometime next week.
SubConf 2007
Last month we announced in this newsletter the first-ever Subversion conference: Subconf 2007. The event will take place in Germany, October 16th to 18th. An English-language information page was not yet available last month. It is now: http://www.subconf.com/.
Some presentations will be in German but there are a number of sessions in English. Workshops the day before and after the conference are in English as well. These workshops are provided by CollabNet and will focus on deploying Subversion for globally distributed teams and we will provide in-depth information on Subversion 1.5, especially about Merge Tracking of course. http://www.subconf.com//.
A number of our Subversion committers will be at the conference, so come at meet them.
For more information, go to http://www.subconf.com/ (for German: http://2007.subconf.de/).
Recent blog posts
Subversion 1.4.5 Released - Mark Phippard on why Windows client users should upgrade to 1.4.5.
SCPlugin: Subversion for the rest of OS X - Jack Repenning discusses the Mac OS X Finder plugin for Subversion.
Unstoppable Subversion - Guido Haarmans on Subversion’s adoption around the world.
Mirroring Repositories with svnsync - Jeremy Whitlock on, well: Mirroring Repositories with svnsync
A list of all our posts is at http://blogs.open.collab.net/svn/archive-titles.html
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