On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 7:31 PM, Peter Samuelson <pe...@p12n.org> wrote: > [Markus Schaber] >> So my personal experience tells me that multiple-client scenarios are >> the common case, and that the deployment strategy (only using linux >> distro packages, or 3-in-1 bundles like VisualSVN) can reduce that >> problem. > > So, we provide a pile of libraries that maintain ABI backward > compatibility. You can have as many different svn client apps on a > given system as you want, and so long as they are all using the same > copy of our libraries, there is no cross-version compatibility problem. > > (Of course, there's two other related issues: 1) sharing a wc across > two or more systems; 2) use of SVNKit. I'll ignore both for now; > SVNKit in particular is, and should be, Somebody Else's Problem anyway.)
I think it's sad that there is so much antagonism against SVNKit in this community. With my svn user hat on, I consider SVNKit as just another part of the svn ecosystem. As a user, I don't really care if it's implemented in C, in Java or in Turbo Pascal :-), as long as it plays by the rules and acts like any other svn client. Besides, in our environment I have no choice but to use SVNKit: the svn plugin of my IDE (IntelliJ IDEA) only works with SVNKit. I think it would be beneficial for the svn ecosystem as a whole if this community would try to build better relations with the SVNKit people. Some mutual understanding certainly wouldn't hurt. I was very happy to see more interest by the SVNKit guys in the core project, and see their presence at the Berlin Hackathon (hi Dmitry :-)). > But IMO, we need to encourage using a _single_ copy of the Subversion > libraries for all your clients. As you noted, that's how things work > in integrated OSes like Linux distributions. It is unfortunate that > the Windows world has a long cultural history of bundling dependencies > into every installer, which obviously works against this goal. > > Is there some way we could push back? Encourage downstream developers > to settle on a common libsvn installation? If they have to bundle it > for ease-of-installation purposes, can they do so in such a way that, > from a system perspective, it's two independent components? Basically > bundle a common libsvn _installer_, instead of bundling libsvn (and of > course apr / apr-util / apr-iconv and their dependencies) into your > base package? > > I think there's precedent for this approach - e.g., the way some > Windows installers will bundle a copy of VC++ runtime libraries, or the > .NET CLR, in case you don't have a new enough one already. I guess this is theoretically possible. But as a Windows user, I personally wouldn't like it. This is exactly one of the things that annoys me every time when I'm working on e.g. Solaris: What? I can't have two different svn versions installed at the same time? On my central build server with 1000 working copies I can't just quickly install a 1.7 version to do some tests, while all my colleagues keep on running svn 1.6 for the real stuff. Gah. -- Johan
