I got most of beta 2 done already. I'm finishing a feature that should help a lot of people that are having problems configuring their servers in PainlessSVN. The issue is that people who are new to Subversion set the repository root directory incorrectly. What I'm doing is taking a page from Microsoft Internet Explorer's book.

The reason IE got very popular is that it worked even when people used very bad HTML for their websites. That was all good when the World Wide Web was fairly new. This feature doesn't fly today, because there are a lot more experienced people who want standards in browser DOM. Browser differences in the DOM cause all kinds of headaches for web designers and developers. And that's the main reason I avoid web programming. And that's ok, there's plenty of other types of programming out there. One type of programming is not "better" than another, just different.

Now, back to PainlessSVN... Subversion is just gathering steam in t he programming world. Windows programmers have been stuck with Visual Source Safe (VSS). Both Subversion and VSS are essentially free. Subversion is hands down more stable than VSS. I'm adding code to detect badly setup repository root directories. Here's an example of what I mean:

The highlighted directories should be inside a repository. These directories should not be in the top level directory. I need to add code so that PainlessSVN does not choke when dealing with strange setups like that. In essense, I need to let the software be more usable, and not give users grief. Most people just want it to work, and don't care for the little details that are necessary to make things work correctly.

I'm also in the process of finalizing testing the new changes for the install script in my virtual machines. The problem with Windows 2003 Server Standard Edition has been resolved. It was all the installation script, and not PainlessSVN. Basically, the MMC 3.0 libraries get install in the "wrong" directory. The install script copies them to the right directories. This solves the problem permanently.

Beta 1 will still work, as I haven't put in any time based kill code (yet). My wife, Tammy, was sick all last week, and that killed all of my spare time to work on PainlessSVN. Tammy is much better now, so I should have more time to work on  this.