PublicVR Forum

projects have long benefitted by sharing files
via "SVN" an on-line library for all our files. See

http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/links.html

Now that the "Pompeii" and "PublicVR Website" projects are moving into
high gear, it is time to set up their own libraries on SVN and
introduce it to our non-nerds. For this, we need a simple and
easy-to-use client (a program for interfacing with the library) which
will work on any operating system. The client must be able to brows
the repository, check in files and check them out. Anybody can use
any client thay want to to access SVN--we just need a simple one to
officially support.

I think that a web-based solution is probably best. At a very cursor
glance, I like these four are possiblities, in this order:

http://insurrection.tigris.org/

http://www.usvn.info/

http://search.cpan.org/~nikc/SVN-Web/lib/SVN/Web.pm

http://www.polarion.org/index.php?page=overview&project=svnwebclient

Please have a look and let us know which one looks most comfortable for
you.

I reject these web-based clients, mainly because most of them only let
you view the repository and do not allow file check-ins.

http://www.viewvc.org/ view only
http://websvn.tigris.org/ view only
http://www.horde.org/chora/ view only
http://web-cpan.berlios.de/modules/SVN-RaWeb-Light/ undocumented
http://www.osdevel.org/projects/show/16?lang=en link dead
http://www.outoforder.cc/projects/apache/mod_svn_view/ view only
https://bssvnbrowser.bountysource.com/docs/install undocumented
http://www.sventon.org/ view only

As for the NON-web interface clients, I really like TortoiseSVN, but
it only works on Windows. Blah. Syncro and many others work on both
Windows and MAC. What I don't like about all of them (except
Tortoise) is that each one has its own, unique, interface which takes
a while to learn. Most of them present a very croweded GUI, not too
friendly, IMHO. Nevertheless, if there is one you really like, Please
let us know.

I've taken a look at the webclients you list and a few others. None of them seem to offer any feature other than viewing a directory. 'Sventon' does offer a "download as zip" function but this merely zips up all the selected files and downloads them en mass. This zip does not contain the .svn structure so you can't check your changes back in to the repository without an actual desktop svn client.

I've taken a look at the desktop clients as well and none of them really stand out. Like you said they all have their quirks and all of the GUI's have a learning curve. I kinda like eSVN because its right click menu appears very similar to TortoiseSVN but it still requires a bit of getting used to.

It's your call but I would recommend you just refer future collaborators to the SVN link page: http://subversion.tigris.org/links.html Let them choose the GUI that most suites their needs. Windows users can use TortoiseSVN, Linux users could use eSVN or RapidSVN, and Mac users can enjoy their expensive paper weights. :) I kid. ZigVersion appears to be a decent Mac OS X client.

Where would you like to go from here? I can implement any of the web clients if you desire a better GUI.

I agree. Let's just let everybody use whatever client they want, but only explicitly support Tortoise SVN and a MAC or cross-platform client. I'll look at ZigVersion and a couple of others. Linux-only users are not likely to need much help with the client, anyway.

I discovered that file path names longer than 256 characters can lead to problems with SVN, especially if you're using Windows. A "pathname" It is a combination of the files actual name plus the chain of directories needed to reach it. It is my general policy that filenames should be short and contain neither blanks nor special characters. Importantly, he should not depend on the name of the file to tell you what it is. You should get the context from its full pathname. In fact, I often think of files as being named by their full path.

TortoiseSVN on Windows and SvnX on the MAC seem to be able to get around the 256 limit most of the time, but you never know when your repository is going to blow up. I think this is ultimately a problem with Windows' file systems, but it ends up infecting the operations elsewhere. Other clients just don't work at all if the repository has very long pathnames.

I really like the SVN client, SCPlugin, because it is a lot like TortoiseSVN on Windows. to get yourself properly set up with the repository still requires use of the command line interface, at least so far as I understand. however, once you are set up is nicely integrated with the Mac finder.

I also like the free SVN client for the MAC, SvnX available at http://www.lachoseinteractive.net/en/co ... 58f24d2ed6
The documentation is extremely minimal, however, so getting started and would require previous knowledge of SVN.