Subversion blog posts to read

I have been real busy with the new job and have not had time to blog. When I have had some time, it went into blogging over on the Submerged blog. Anyway, here are some links to some good blog posts I have seen recently about Subversion.

On the Submerged blog:

Computing the Differences Between Tags by yours truly :)
In this post I show the new svn diff --summarize command and how you can use it to get a list of files that changed between two repository locations.

Authz and Anon Authn Agony by Mike Pilato
In this post Mike explains a difficult problem you can run into when you want to provide anonymous access but also have private folders within the repository structure.

Multiple Subversion Repositories? by Guido Haarmans
This post touches on the issue of having multiple replicated repositories to support globally distributed development. More specifically, why you may not really need this with Subversion as you do with other tools I will not mention.

Subversion LDAP Authentication with Apache by Jeremy Whitlock
Jeremy gives a primer on how to configure Apache to authenticate users via an LDAP directory, such as Microsoft Active Directory.

How Subversion Conserves Disk Space by Guido Haarmans
This is a high-level overview of how the Subversion repository stores your data.

Finally, I have been meaning to link to another set of posts I have looked at. On his blog TrajicklyHip, Aaron West has written a whole series of detailed posts about setting up a Subversion environment and then working with various clients. He has good links within the posts themselves, so I will just link to my favorite, the one about Subclipse. :) I am fairly experienced with Subversion and these posts are aimed at getting people started, so I cannot say that I have poured over every word in detail. That being said, it all looks quite well done and what I read was accurate. I would recommend you check it out.

First blog post and article on openCollabNet

I have agreed to participate in the Submerged blog on openCollabNet and made my first post recently. I guess they did not read this blog too closely and notice my penchant for really long posts. Anyway, we decided to make the post into an article instead. The article is about installing the svnserve server option to run as a Windows service and you can find it here.

My first blog post then just became an introduction to the article. You can find that post here. If you have any comments on the article, you can leave them on the blog post. (Yes, that is four links to the same post if you are counting).

In the future, I will probably do more of my Subversion-specific posts on the Submerged blog and do the Subclipse posts here. I will figure it out as I have things I want to write about.

Incorrect Article about me at EclipseZone

There was an article posted today at EclipseZone (which I am not going to link to) announcing that Subversive has been approved as an Eclipse project. Congratulations to them, although this actually happened a couple of months ago so I do not know why it is news. Anyway, the article includes the following quote:

Since Mark Phippard has been quoted as joining Polarion on a flyer included in the EclipseCon information pack, perhaps the combination of the existing skills and technology will finally bring kosher subversion support for Eclipse by default.

Even worse is that this same statement has been included in the two-sentence blurb that gets repeated in aggregators like Planet Eclipse.

This is completely untrue.

However, I have recently started a new job at CollabNet, which I am very excited about, and will eventually blog about in more detail. I am assuming that the author of the post somehow got confused about this detail. CollabNet, as well as myself, are very committed to Subclipse and will continue to ensure that it is the best provider of support for Subversion in the Eclipse IDE. In addition, CollabNet provides support for Subclipse in their Subversion support packages available at openCollabNet.

By the way, the Subversive project being provisioned at Eclipse.org, does not mean that the Subclipse-based proposal cannot also be provisioned. Although eventually there does have to just be one project, it is still early in the process. Our proposal got put on hold while I was looking for a new job. I could have advanced it to the next stage back in late November but decided not to. Once the dust settles on new job at CollabNet I will provide more updates on the proposal.

Update: The text of the EclipseZone article has been updated to remove the part about me. Thanks.

What makes an Open Source Company?

One of the core Subversion developers, Garrett Rooney, posted an interesting piece entitled What makes an Open Source Company?

I agree with what he wrote, so I do not have a lot of commentary to add. My definition of an open source company would primarily be based on how the company interacts with and supports open source software development. Do they have developers that significantly contribute to one or more projects? Do they engage the community, or at least allow their developers to engage the community? For me, those are the determining factors.

By the way, Garrett was the author, now co-author with Daniel Berlin, of one of the best Subversion books available: Practical Subversion.