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  12 <title>Subversion 1.4 Release Notes</title>
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  18 <h1 style="text-align: center">Subversion 1.4 Release Notes</h1>
  19
  20 <div class="h2" id="news" title="news">
  21 <h2>What's New in Subversion 1.4</h2>
  22
  23 <ul>
  24   <li><tt>svnsync</tt>, a new repository mirroring tool</li>
  25   <li>Huge working-copy performance improvements</li>
  26   <li>Support for BerkeleyDB 4.4 and its "auto recovery" feature</li>
  27   <li>Size improvements to the binary delta algorithm</li>
  28   <li>A handful of new command switches</li>
  29   <li>Many improved APIs</li>
  30   <li>More than 40 new bugfixes</li>
  31 </ul>
  32
  33 <p>Details are described below.</p>
  34
  35 <p>Subversion 1.4 is a superset of all previous Subversion releases,
  36 and is considered the current "best" release.  Anything in 1.0.x,
  37 1.1.x, 1.2.x or 1.3.x is also in 1.4, but 1.4 contains features and
  38 bugfixes not present in any earlier release.  The new features will
  39 eventually be documented in a 1.4 version of the free Subversion book,
  40 see <a
  41 href="http://svnbook.red-bean.com">svnbook.red-bean.com</a>.</p>
  42
  43 </div>  <!-- news -->
  44
  45 <div class="h2" id="compatibility" title="compatibility">
  46 <h2>Compatibility Concerns</h2>
  47
  48 <p>Older clients and servers interoperate transparently with 1.4
  49 servers and clients.  Of course, some of the new 1.4 features may not
  50 be available unless both client and server are the latest version.
  51 There is <strong>no need</strong> to dump and reload your
  52 repositories; Subversion 1.4 can read repositories created by earlier
  53 versions.  To upgrade an existing installation, just install the
  54 newest libraries and binaries on top of the older ones.</p>
  55
  56 <p>Subversion 1.4 maintains API/ABI compatibility with earlier
  57 releases, by only adding new functions.  A program written to the 1.0,
  58 1.1, 1.2 or 1.3 API can both compile and run using 1.4 libraries.
  59 However, a program written for 1.4 cannot necessarily compile or run
  60 against older libraries.</p>
  61
  62 <div class="h3" id="wc-format-change" title="wc-format-change">
  63 <h3>Working Copy and Repository Format Changes</h3>
  64
  65 <p>Due to certain improvements and bugfixes made to the working copy
  66 library, the version number of the working copy format has been
  67 incremented. This means that Subversion clients earlier than 1.4 will
  68 <em>not</em> be able to work with working copies produced by Subversion
  69 1.4.  Similarly, the repository format has changed as well, meaning
  70 that pre-1.4 Subversion tools that normally access a repository
  71 directly
  72 (e.g. <tt>svnserve</tt>, <tt>mod_dav_svn</tt>, <tt>svnadmin</tt>)
  73 won't be able to read a repository originally created by Subversion
  74 1.4. </p>
  75
  76 <p><strong>WARNING:</strong> if a Subversion 1.4 client encounters a pre-1.4
  77 working copy, it will <em>automatically</em> upgrade the working copy
  78 format as soon as it touches it, making it unreadable by older
  79 Subversion clients.  If you are using several versions of Subversion
  80 on your machine, you need to be careful about which version you use in
  81 which working copy, to avoid accidentally upgrading the working copy
  82 format.  This "auto upgrade" feature, however, does <em>not</em> occur
  83 with the new repository format.  </p>
  84
  85 </div>  <!-- wc-format-change -->
  86
  87 <div class="h3" id="output-changes" title="output-changes">
  88 <h3>Command Line Output Changes</h3>
  89
  90 <p>Although the Subversion developers try hard to keep output from the
  91 command line programs compatible between releases, new information
  92 sometimes has to be added.  This might break scripts that rely on the
  93 exact format of the output.  In 1.4, the following changes have been
  94 made to the output:</p>
  95
  96 <ul>
  97
  98 <li><p>Conflict markers in files now match the file's defined eol-style.</p></li>
  99
 100 </ul>
 101
 102 </div>  <!-- output-changes -->
 103
 104 </div>  <!-- compatibility -->
 105
 106 <div class="h2" id="new-features" title="new-features">
 107 <h2>New Features</h2>
 108
 109 <div class="h3" id="svnsync" title="svnsync">
 110 <h3>svnsync (<em>some features require a 1.4 server</em>)</h3>
 111
 112 <p>A new tool &mdash; <a
 113 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/notes/svnsync.txt"
 114 ><tt>svnsync</tt></a> &mdash; is now installed as part of the standard
 115 distribution.  This tool provides the ability to replicate history
 116 from one repository to another.  The replication can happen all at
 117 once, or can be done incrementally through repeated 'sync' operations.
 118 Because the tool uses the abstract network (RA) API, the source and
 119 destination repositories can be either local, remote, or any
 120 combination thereof.</p>
 121
 122 <p><em>Compatibility note</em>: in order to "push" information into a
 123 destination repository, any version of the server will suffice.  The
 124 pushing is done through ordinary network commits.  To "pull" history
 125 from the source repository, however, requires a 1.4 (or later)
 126 server.</p>
 127
 128 <p>Usage of this tool will be documented in the Subversion book soon,
 129 but for now, running <tt>svnsync help</tt> should suffice; the number
 130 of subcommands is very small, and the help system documents them
 131 all.</p>
 132
 133 </div> <!-- svnsync -->
 134
 135 <div class="h3" id="wc-improvements" title="wc-improvements">
 136 <h3>Working copy performance improvements (<em>client</em>)</h3>
 137
 138 <p>The way in which the Subversion client manages your working copy
 139 has undergone radical changes.  The <tt>.svn/entries</tt> file is no
 140 longer XML, and the client has become smarter about the way it manages
 141 and stores property metadata.</p>
 142
 143 <p>As a result, there are substantial performance improvements.  The
 144 new working copy format allows the client to more quickly search a
 145 working copy, detect file modifications, manage property metadata, and
 146 deal with large files.  The overall disk footprint is smaller as well,
 147 with fewer inodes being used.  Additionally, a number of long standing
 148 bugs related to merging and copying have been fixed.</p>
 149
 150 <p><strong>WARNING:</strong> A Subversion 1.4 client will upgrade
 151 older working copies to the new format WITHOUT WARNING, rendering them
 152 unreadable by older Subersion clients.  See the section above, titled
 153 'Working Copy Format Changes'.</p>
 154
 155 </div> <!-- wc-improvements -->
 156
 157 <div class="h3" id="bdb-4.4" title="bdb-4.4">
 158 <h3>BerkeleyDB 4.4 and auto-recovery (<em>server</em>)</h3>
 159
 160 <p>A common problem with previous versions of Subversion is that
 161 crashed server processes could leave BerkeleyDB-based repositories in
 162 an unusable "wedged" state, requiring administrators to manually
 163 intervene and bring back online.  (Note: this is not due to bugs in
 164 BerkeleyDB, but due to the unorthodox way in which Subversion uses
 165 it!)</p>
 166
 167 <p>Subversion 1.4 can now be compiled against BerkeleyDB 4.4, which
 168 has a new "auto-recovery" feature.  If a Subversion server process
 169 crashes and leaves the repository in an inconsistent state, the next
 170 process which attempts to access the repository will notice the
 171 problem, grab exclusive control of the repository, and automatically
 172 recover it.  In theory (and in our testing), this new feature makes
 173 BerkeleyDB-based repositories just as wedge-proof as FSFS
 174 repositories.</p>
 175
 176 <p><strong>WARNING:</strong> While upgrading to a new version of Berkeley DB
 177 will not require you to dump and reload your repository, you
 178 <em>will</em> still need to follow the Berkeley DB upgrade regimen to
 179 ensure that your repository is accessible by the new version of those
 180 libraries.  Please see the <a
 181 href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/documentation/berkeley-db/db/ref/upgrade/process.html"
 182 >Upgrading Berkeley DB installations</a> chapter of the Berkeley DB
 183 Reference Guide for instructions on upgrading Berkeley DB
 184 environments.</p>
 185
 186 </div>  <!-- bdb-4.4 -->
 187
 188 <div class="h3" id="svndiff1" title="svndiff1">
 189 <h3>Binary Delta Encoding Improvements (<em>client and server</em>)</h3>
 190
 191 <p>Subversion uses the xdelta algorithm to compute differences between
 192 strings of bytes.  The output of this algorithm is stored in a custom
 193 format called 'svndiff'.  svndiff data is what's stored in the
 194 repository to represent the difference between successive versions of
 195 files, and svndiff data is also transmitted over the wire between
 196 client and server (e.g. during updates and commits.)</p>
 197
 198 <p>In Subversion 1.4, the svndiff format has been improved to use much
 199 less disk space &mdash; up to 50% less on plain text files in some
 200 cases.  Thus, if you choose to dump and reload your repository, the
 201 new repository should be noticeably smaller on disk.  (Make sure
 202 to <tt>svnadmin create</tt> the new repository using svnadmin 1.4.)
 203 Additionally, if a client and server are both version 1.4 , then
 204 network traffic becomes smaller and faster.</p>
 205
 206 <p><strong>WARNING:</strong> A repository created by svnadmin 1.4 will not be
 207 readable by earlier Subversion libraries or tools.  However, in order
 208 to experience the smaller data format, you'll have to dump and reload
 209 your data.  If you <em>don't</em> recreate your repository with
 210 svnadmin 1.4, it will continue writing data in the older, larger
 211 format, and will still be readable by older Subversion tools.</p>
 212
 213 </div> <!-- svndiff1 -->
 214
 215
 216 <div class="h3" id="new-switches" title="new-switches">
 217 <h3>New subcommand switches</h3>
 218
 219 This release of Subversion adds a few new switches and options to the
 220 command line client. These are:
 221
 222    <dl>
 223       <dt><tt>svn blame --force</tt></dt>
 224       <dd>Displays the output of blame, even if the file is binary.</dd>
 225
 226       <dt><tt>svn merge/blame -x</tt></dt>
 227       <dd>Merge and blame commands can now pass options to an external
 228       diff3 program.</dd>
 229
 230       <dt><tt>svn diff/merge -c/--change</tt></dt>
 231       <dd>You can now simply write -c N to view or merge a single
 232       revision, instead of the cumbersome -r N-1:N.</dd>
 233
 234       <dt><tt>svn diff --summarize</tt></dt>
 235       <dd>Prints only the list of changed files, in the output format
 236       of 'svn status'. This lets you retrieve summaries of changes
 237       directly from a repository, whereas 'svn status' operates only
 238       on the local changes of your working copy.</dd>
 239
 240       <dt><tt>svn diff -x [-u | -b | -w | --ignore-eol-style]</tt></dt>
 241       <dd>The diff engine internal to Subversion can now ignore
 242       whitespace and eol-style when computing the diff.</dd>
 243
 244    </dl>
 245
 246 </div>  <!-- new-switches -->
 247
 248 </div>  <!-- new-features -->
 249
 250 <div class="h2" id="enhancements" title="enhancements">
 251 <h2>Enhancements and Bugfixes</h2>
 252
 253 <div class="h3" id="svnserve" title="svnserve">
 254 <h3>svnserve as native Windows service (<em>server</em>)</h3>
 255
 256 The <tt>svnserve</tt> server can now be run as a Windows service. This
 257 allows svnserve to start automatically, at system boot time, without
 258 having a user logged in and without the need for an external service
 259 'wrapper' program. See <a
 260 href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/tags/1.4.0/notes/windows-service.txt"><tt>notes/windows-service.txt</tt></a>
 261 for information on setting up <tt>svnserve</tt> as a Windows service.
 262
 263 </div>  <!-- svnserve -->
 264
 265 <div class="h3" id="keychain" title="keychain">
 266 <h3>OS X Keychain support (<em>client</em>)</h3>
 267
 268 On OS X, the <tt>svn</tt> client now caches passwords in Keychain,
 269 rather than in <tt>~/.subversion/auth/</tt>.
 270
 271 </div> <!-- keychain -->
 272
 273 <div class="h3" id="apis" title="apis">
 274 <h3>API improvements (<em>client and server</em>)</h3>
 275
 276 <p>If you develop a 3rd-party client application that uses Subversion
 277   APIs, you may want to take notice of some new APIs:</p>
 278
 279 <ul>
 280   <li>The RA replay API, used by <tt>svnsync</tt>, lets you retrieve
 281   all the data associated with a set of revisions in a single
 282   operation.</li>
 283
 284   <li>Many APIs have been revised to newer versions.</li>
 285 </ul>
 286
 287 </div>  <!-- apis -->
 288
 289 <div class="h3" id="bugfixes" title="bugfixes">
 290 <h3>Other bugfixes (<em>client and server</em>)</h3>
 291
 292 <p>The usual slew of heretofore-unreleased bugfixes, more than 40
 293 overall. See the
 294 <a href="http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/CHANGES">CHANGES</a>
 295 file for full details.</p>
 296
 297 </div>  <!-- bugfixes -->
 298
 299 </div>  <!-- enhancements -->
 300
 301 <div class="h2" id="svn-1.2-deprecation" title="svn-1.2-deprecation">
 302 <h2>Subversion 1.2.x series no longer supported</h2>
 303
 304 <p>The Subversion 1.2.x line is no longer supported.  This doesn't
 305 mean that your 1.2 installation is doomed; if it works well and is all
 306 you need, that's fine.  "No longer supported" just means we've stopped
 307 accepting bug reports against 1.2.x versions, and will not make any
 308 more 1.2.x bugfix releases, except perhaps for absolutely critical
 309 security or data-loss bugs.</p>
 310
 311 </div>  <!-- svn-1.2-deprecation -->
 312
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