Planet Subversion

27th August 2009 - 12:00pm

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7th July 2009 - 12:00pm

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I added a post on my personal blog yesterday about support for Subversion being available for the just released Eclipse 3.5/Galileo release. Today I am going to show just how easy it is to install support for Subversion in Eclipse 3.5.

While I think that installing plugins in Eclipse is generally a pretty easy process, my views on this are colored by the fact that I have been doing it since before Eclipse 1.0 came out. That said, the Eclipse Mylyn team has made the process super-easy in the Eclipse 3.5 release.

I started by downloading one of the Eclipse packages from the download site. I chose the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers, just make sure you get one of the options that includes Mylyn.

After unzipping the bundle and starting Eclipse, look for the Mylyn Task List view and click on the New Task button as shown here:



This brings up the following Mylyn wizard. Note the new option to install more connectors:

After clicking the "Install More Connectors" button you are presented with a list of connectors that Mylyn can install. In the list of connectors that has been certified by Tasktop, you will see the CollabNet Desktop for SVN. The CollabNet Mylyn connectors, including Subclipse and our graphical merge client, have been certified by the team at Tasktop.  That means that these plugins play well with others and can be properly integrated into a number of Eclipse-based IDE's. Subclipse is the only Subversion plugin to have been certified by Tasktop.



I checked the box for the CollabNet Desktop for SVN and click Finish.

Three clicks, and I have started the process for installing Subversion support into Eclipse, it does not get much easier than that!

At this point, the rest is handled by the install magic from the Mylyn team. They run through the Eclipse install mechanism to verify and install your selections. I was doing this just after the launch of Eclipse 3.5 and I am sure the mirrors were getting hammered. Whatever the process does initially to validate the dependencies to verify the install took a few minutes, but eventually the following dialogs came up and it is just a matter of clicking through the wizard to complete the install. For completeness, here are those dialogs:

Confirm your selections and click Next:

I expanded the selection, so that you can see all of the components that will be installed.  You get the CollabNet Desktop, which allows you to connect to any CollabNet hosted site.  Subclipse, and its required components.  The Subversion revision graph feature that I have blogged about previously, and the CollabNet Merge client, which makes merging easy and powerful from the Eclipse environment.

Accept the licenses. All of these products are free and open-source, licensed under the EPL.

And finally, just click Yes to restart Eclipse.  That is it, not only do you have a working Subversion client in Eclipse, you have one with all of the bells and whistles as well as one that has been certified by Tasktop.

One Caveat!

The above install was done on Windows Vista 32-bit.  If you are running on another operating system, you must have the Subversion 1.6.x native libraries, including the JavaHL library available.  CollabNet provides an installer for OSX that includes this library, as well as a Linux client RPM that should work on any Linux distro.  Windows 64-bit users can install the SlikSVN package.  All of this information and more is available in this FAQ about JavaHL.

With the Eclipse 3.5 final release now available, I thought it would be good to get a post up for Subversion users that are looking to install this release. Subclipse works great in Eclipse 3.5 and is easy to install. There are two versions of Subclipse available with support for Eclipse 3.5.

Subclipse 1.4.x is based on Subversion 1.5 client API
Subclipse 1.6.x is based on Subversion 1.6 client API

Install the version of Subclipse based on the version of Subversion you want to use. This is mainly an issue if you want to use multiple clients with the same Subversion working copy. If you do all of your work from Eclipse, then just grab the latest version. All Subversion 1.x clients can work with all Subversion 1.x servers. So, if possible, just use the latest version.

OSX and Linux users need to install the right version of the JavaHL library (1.5 or 1.6). Most Linux distros are still providing 1.5.x, but the RPM's from CollabNet include JavaHL and install on every Linux distro that I have tried (including Ubuntu). CollabNet also provides binaries and JavaHL for OSX.

I maintain a wiki on the Subclipse site with detailed information about getting JavaHL working on your system.

In other news, Subclipse 1.6.x now includes the CollabNet Merge client. This was developed as part of the merge tracking feature in Subversion 1.5 and makes merging from Eclipse very easy to do and manage. The CollabNet Merge client is part of the CollabNet Desktop - Eclipse Edition, which includes Mylyn and connectors for CollabNet's trackers. The merge client is now also available directly for Subclipse users with no other dependencies. Users that want the full merge client, which adds the change set merge option, can install the CollabNet Desktop.

A lot changes in four years: people arrive and people leave.

I keep having this dream over and over — it’s not so much a dream that I have at night, but a recurring sort of daydream, some sort of metaphorical interpretation of reality that keeps popping into my head.

I imagine my whole life as a long movie, complete with interesting characters, plot twists, adventures, and so on. The movie is wrapping up and preparing for a sequel. My wife and I are in a big grassy field, and my parents approach to say good-bye. “You’re leaving now?” I ask dumbfoundedly. “You don’t need us anymore, and our work here is done” they say, and then give me big hugs. I hear the distant giggles of two small boys coming over the hill towards us. “Be sure to pass on the love,” they say, “and remember everything we’ve taught you.” And then they romantically mosey off into the sunset. As I watch them vanish, my two sons crash into my legs giggling, asking for attention. And then we cut to credits with happy music.

Maybe the human mind really does store all experience in the form of stories. Or maybe I’ve just watched too much Hollywood.

A new version of TortoiseSVN is available: version 1.6.3, linked against Subversion 1.6.3.
This is a bugfix/maintenance release only and includes many bugfixes in both TortoiseSVN and the svn library.

All files are now digitally signed, make sure you verify your downloads.

The new version is available from our download page.

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We need people that help to finish translating the documentation of TortoiseSVN into the following languages:

Chinese (67% complete)
Croatian (67% complete, only TortoiseMerge)
Dutch (27% complete)
French (75% complete)
Indonesian (53% complete)
Japanese (87% complete)
Persian (2% complete, new project, Problems with right-to-left printing)
Portuguese (4% complete, new project)
Slovak (28% complete)
Slovenian (85% complete)
Spanish (96% complete)

Check the Doc translation status at our DOC translation status page.

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My buddy Andre is getting married today, and in classic Andre-style he asked a few of his buddies (just 5 days ago!) to gather into a last-minute motley band to cover Neil Young’s Harvest Moon as his bride walks down the aisle. Andre is playing guitar along with his soon-to-be brother-in-law, another guy is playing glockenspiel, someone else on percussion, a few female singers. Did he ask me to play banjo? Of course not… certainly not for that song. The band needed an electric bass, so he asked me to fill in.

No problem. I mean, I’ve played a bunch of bluegrass guitar and banjo, and a bass is just an oversized guitar, right? What could possibly go wrong?

It turns out I do have an electric bass already, sitting in my closet unused. I bought it at a garage sale in 1997 for $25, and it was in almost-new condition: it had already been sitting unused in a box for 30 years. It was in fine condition except that all the electronics had rusted and become static-ey. Well, I brought it over to good old Dr. Fretgood this week and they replaced the jack and pot-knobs completely, put new strings on… voila! Works great!

It’s a pretty cheap piece of junk, though. It’s a beginner-level bass made by Kay (who is known for excellent upright basses), but made cheap-o basses in the late 60’s. They were all clones of the famous Gibson SG models. As others have said on the net, this bass was the proverbial Sears-Roebuck catalog bass, easily affordable by every 12 year old who wanted to get into rock and roll. Interestingly, these 40 year old basses are now starting to sell for high prices in internet auctions, just because they’re kitchey and some people get a kick out of the retro sound!

We had a simple practice session late last night, and things went great. The band sounds fine, and I managed to bounce simple 1-5 notes on all four chords in the song. I did have an unexepected revelation, however: I never realized how incredibly long the sustain is on a bass. You pluck a note, and it just rings for 10 seconds! So while my guitar skills transferred over okay, I suddenly found myself having to deliberately mute every note I played at some specific time after I plucked it. After a while, it became clear that the muting actions are just as important to the ‘rhythm’ of the bass as the plucking actions. What a strange new thing to have to pay attention to!

I fooled around a bit more today, and figured out how to play the bassline to Zepplin’s Ramble On, one of my most favorite basslines ever. Wow. This could be… really fun. Must resist, I don’t have time for new instruments.

I need to sit down with a real bass player, however, and learn right-hand picking technique. Right now my instinct is to pluck every darn note with my thumb, because the strings are so huge. I’m sure that’s not right.

11th June 2009 - 12:00pm

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IBM Rational today announced the winners of the 2009 IBM Rational Business Partner Awards at the Rational Software Conference. These awards recognize IBM Business Partners that have helped clients drive