Speaker Topics - No Fluff Just Stuff
NFJS2025

Making the Most of Subversion

It shouldn't be long now before Subversion gains title as the most used version control system, if it hasn't already.

A solid version control system forms the heart of every well run software project. Until recently project teams selecting such a system had to choose between CVS (open source but showing its age and clunky) or a commercial product like Perforce or SourceSafe (polished but expensive). Subversion makes the decision a lot easier. Subversion has all the features of CVS that you'd want plus it boasts:

  • Directories, renames, and file meta-data are versioned
  • Commits are truly atomic
  • Apache network server option, with WebDAV/DeltaV protocol
  • Branching and tagging are cheap (constant time) operations
  • Natively client/server, layered library design
  • Client/server protocol sends diffs in both directions
  • Costs are proportional to change size, not data size
  • Choice of database or plain-file repository implementations
  • Versioning of symbolic links
  • Efficient handling of binary files
  • Parseable output
  • Localized messages

If you aren't using Subversion, come to this talk to learn why you should. If you are, then come to this talk to learn how to make the most of your tool.

Topics include:

  • Why Subversion?
  • Basic file management
  • Network communication
  • Branching, tagging, and merging
  • Locking
  • History
  • Directory organization
  • Email triggers
  • Migrating from CVS
  • Server options
  • User authentication options
  • Useful third party tools

Jason Hunter

About Jason Hunter

Jason Hunter is Principal Technologist with Mark Logic, specializing in large-scale XML content manipulation using XQuery. He's probably best known as the author of “Java Servlet Programming” (O'Reilly Media). He's also an Apache Member and as Apache's representative on the Java Community Process Executive Committee he established a landmark agreement allowing open source Java. He's publisher of Servlets.com and XQuery.com, an original contributer to Apache Tomcat (and Apache Ant committer), the creator of the JDOM open source project, a member of the expert groups responsible for Servlet, JSP, JAXP, and XQJ API development, and was recently appointed Sun Java Champion. In 2003, he received the Oracle Magazine Author of the Year award, and in both 2005 and 2006, the JavaOne Outstanding Talk award. His largest audience was 15,000 at a JavaOne conference keynote.

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