PainlessSVN

First I want to thank everybody who has been reading my blog. Even though PainlessSVN has not been "officially" released, I did put it up for the public. I'm giving a discount for my blog readers. Please use "blogearlybirdaug2008", without the quotes to get $30 off the regular price. This will last until September 5, 2008, midnight Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7).

The official release is September 6th, 2008.

The reason I haven't been posting, is because I've been hard at work with PainlessSVN 1.2.0. I've been fixing the install script, so that I can add some new stuff. The only thing that I can say, is that this next version will come with Subversion server. You can choose not to install Subversion. If you do install it, the install script will configure it for you. The script will also do the following:

• Create the repository root directory
• Set svnserve.exe to run as a service
• Configure the PainlessSVN console to pick up the svnserve settings automatically

There's actually quite a bit more, but this all that I'm going to say for now.

I had the http://painlesssvn.com domain pointed to a page to this site. I'm in the process of moving it off this website, and onto its own webiste. The new site is now up. I'm slowing moving PainlessSVN and Subversion content over there.

http://painlesssvn.com

I just finished fixing some bugs, and put finishing touches on PainlessSVN 1.1.0. This has been long in coming, and I'm very happy with the results. I am now concentrating on the installation script and testing it in different versions of Windows. I'm hoping that this takes no longer than a week (hopefully, less than that). I will reset the trial, so that people who have previously downloaded, can trial again.

Here are few screenshots of the new UI in Windows 7 Ultimate x64:

I've decided that I have to be better at releasing things. I have several completed enhancements for PainlessSVN, but I have held back, because I wanted a lot of other ones to be done. No more. I will release a new version, when I do a bug fix or a single feature is completed and tested.

Proposed Roadmap:

PainlessSVN 1.1

• Automatic Subversion server discovery
• Automatic PainlessSVN configuration, if server is found in above step
• Configuration wizard
• More information on objects selected in treeview, on the contents pane
• Status of svnserve Windows service, if any is found

These enhancements are done and have been sitting in my repository for a couple months. Just need to get this packaged for release. This will be done very soon, as soon as I get all of my release tools configured.

PainlessSVN 1.2

• PainlessSVN Solo (Standard) released
• Start and Stop Windows service for svnserve
• The ability to create a Windows service for svnserve, if none is found

This code is also already written, and sitting in my repository. I still need setup the release bits for PainlessSVN Solo.

PainlessSVN 1.3

• Repository grouping by Realms
• Path-based security

These are about 50% done. The other 50% is for actually editing the Realms' information and configuring the path-based security. I haven't decided if I want to tackle drag-n-drop in this release yet, as I want to just put out what I already have coded.

PainlessSVN 1.4

• Import of dump files

This code is done, but needs an UI. That will take some time to get right.

PainlessSVN 1.4+

This is code that I haven't written yet, but here is some of the stuff that I want to tackle:

• Manage common actions done by hook scripts with a UI
• Plugin system for custom server actions. Basically custom dlls that are usually done with hook scripts, but done with plugins instead
• Enabling and configuring SSH on the server for svn+ssh:// protocols
• Enabling and configuring SASL security
• Downloading and installation of a Subversion distribution, ie Tigris, CollabNet, and SlikSVN
• Editing and syntax-hilighting for already existing hook scripts
• Create a better backup experience for repositories.

This is a lot of work for a single person, but it should keep me busy.

I'm finally done with moving to the new house. So now I've turned my attention to setting up my development environment again. I got all the majority of my dev tools setup and running correctly. I created the directory structure for all the PainlessSVN stuff, but I couldn't remember what was the actual repository name. I spent about 20 minutes trying to guess the name. Arrrgh!

I remoted into the server where I have the Subversion software installed, and downloaded PainlessSVN. I installed it, configured it, and had it running in less than a minute.

Bingo! I saw the names of all my repositories, and I was able to recreate my working copy. Wow, that was easy!

So now, I'm ready to start working on PainlessSVN again. I have some very nice things in the pipeline. I think I'm going to scale back on the features, so that I can release something to the public. I think that I will put the new configuration wizard into the release build, and release that to the public.

I don't have a time frame, other than it will be ready when it is ready.

I've been working on making the repository UI more intuitive. I wanted the UI to make sense at first glance. I believe I got the Subversion Realms working in an intuitve way now.

Notice that all of the repositories with the same realm are now under the same realm node. The Subversion Red-Book explains that repositories in the same realm should point to the same password and authorization file. I'm reflecting that best practice here.

Also notice that the second repository has a custom post-commit hook. This repository is using the rss hook that is in the "Subversion C# hooks" download page.

I finally got reading the Subversion authz file working (at least the basic UI layout). This screenshot is done against one of my live Subversion servers:

So my next step is reading the actual path permission in code, then figuring out how to do an UI for that. The "kernel" that drives PainlessSVN is actually open sourced and it's called SVNManagerLib. I'm hosting it over at CodePlex. Writing this code is not that hard compared to all the UI tricks that I need to use to present this to users.

I'm developing against PainlessSVN. There are a lot of things happening, and I had to slow down work on PainlessSVN. So here's a list of things that have been happening:

1) The house that my family and I were renting went on short sale, and we had to move out immediately. This created chaos for a short time, but it caused enough disruption that I had to stop work on everything.

2) The new rental does not have central air cooling. This made the house very uncomfortable. It was so hot inside that we ended up just sitting outside at night, until it was cool enough to go to sleep. We finally got 3 window units, and we can now live in the house during the day.

3) We signed up to have a new house built for us. This house is currently under construction, and it is scheduled to be completed at the end of August of this year. This is going to cause more disruptions very soon, as we will have to move, yet again. Thankfully, this will be the last move for us in the foreseeable future. I will finally have my own office, and will be able to concentrate back on the business of creating and updating great software.

4) While working on the PainlessSVN code, I realized that I could make it more intuitive if I did some structural changes to the UI. These changes, while pushing back the release of 1.1, will make it much easier to add new features to PainlessSVN. I will talk about these changes in a separate blog post.