ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this point?

Luke 

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Daniel Sahlberg <da...@gmail.com>]

Den mån 13 dec. 2021 kl 20:26 skrev Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>:

> Thank you for the information. I am hopeful that one of the outcomes the
> log4j situation is that ASF project funding would be increased but I
> suspect that thinking is naive. Companies have little incentive to invest
> in something that “works well enough”. I too work for a company that has
> substantial subversion usage but will not support any development on it.
> We are a bit of a unique situation because we have a monorepo with 30-40
> different subprojects and the different subprojects have files with the
> same name (go.mod, cargo.toml, some .hcl files and some others) that have
> very similar or identical content. Originally we had that repo in git but
> the combination of so many identically named files with similar/identical
> content really messed with things like “git log —follow” and generally the
> file level tracking of git since of course git just cares about the
> tree/blobs and not the files. We ran tests and subversion 1.14 handled
> those scenarios substantially better than git since subversion does track
> files. We investigated fossil but it seems to be mostly driven by one
> person and doesn’t have even the subversion level of community support.
> I hope that subversion continues to be around and thrive for a long time
> because even though git “won” the vcs war, I think that subversion does
> still have some advantages in a centralized corporate environment.
>

ASF is depending on fundraising and it isn't overly rich. FY19 showed a net
profit of 329 k$ while FY20 showed a net loss of 277 k$. There is enough
money to run the foundation for a year, *maybe* two if funding dried up.
That is not exactly a situation to employ paid developers. I'm also afraid
that Subversion would not be the first project in the queue.

But I would be glad to be proven wrong and see a big corporate sponsor
showing up with donations earmarked just for Subversion. In the meantime we
all should do what we can and, as Nathan already wrote, every bit counts.
Our company use Subversion professionally, but as end users so I can't give
my boss a business case to allocate much developer resources, however we
are using a commercially licensed server (from one of the companies who
from time to time show up in the mailing lists and in the "commits"
archive). I'm stealing a few unused cycles to help on the mailing lists
and I'm also using a few hours of my free time to look at the code to
(hopefully) learn a few skills that will make me a better developer.

Kind regards,
Daniel

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

Thank you for the information. I am hopeful that one of the outcomes the log4j situation is that ASF project funding would be increased but I suspect that thinking is naive. Companies have little incentive to invest in something that “works well enough”. I too work for a company that has substantial subversion usage but will not support any development on it. 
We are a bit of a unique situation because we have a monorepo with 30-40 different subprojects and the different subprojects have files with the same name (go.mod, cargo.toml, some .hcl files and some others) that have very similar or identical content. Originally we had that repo in git but the combination of so many identically named files with similar/identical content really messed with things like “git log —follow” and generally the file level tracking of git since of course git just cares about the tree/blobs and not the files. We ran tests and subversion 1.14 handled those scenarios substantially better than git since subversion does track files. We investigated fossil but it seems to be mostly driven by one person and doesn’t have even the subversion level of community support. 
I hope that subversion continues to be around and thrive for a long time because even though git “won” the vcs war, I think that subversion does still have some advantages in a centralized corporate environment.

> On Dec 13, 2021, at 10:24 AM, Nathan Hartman <ha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:37 AM Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 07:14:46AM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
>>> It looks like the stashing functionality is still experimental. Do you think there will be more funding in the future to complete it or do you think it may remain unfinished for a long period of time?
>>> 
>> 
>> I do not know any specifics about the funding arragements that were
>> made for the staging feature. What I do know is what anyone can tell
>> from public records such as our mailing list archives and in our commit
>> history. Julian, like many others, is working in other jobs nowadays and
>> has not actively contributed much to SVN during the last year or so.
>> 
>> I suspect there are still some developers who would be open to the idea
>> of returning to continue working on in-progress features if they could
>> put food on the table in return. A simple fact is that any altruism
>> these people have spent over years in order to provide this tool to
>> communities and companies has largely run dry by now. While SVN grew
>> up because many of its developers were on paid time since 2000, many
>> were also willing to invest some of their free time to help out because
>> this was a fun and challenging project to work on.
>> 
>> But not many can afford to do such work in their free time forever, given
>> the complexity of the subject matter, the expectations of quality that
>> need to be met, and the fact that most users are now businesses which
>> simply use SVN because it does not cost them a cent compared to similar
>> proprietary offerings which are usually very expensive. I know this
>> because over the course of about a decade I have helped many such
>> companies move over to SVN from such platforms, and SVN works so well
>> for many of them that most do not even see a need for a paid support
>> contract to get help in case things go wrong. I have seen people in
>> companies who wanted to pitch such things to their bosses but found
>> themselves in a difficult spot when trying to justify a budget for
>> SVN tooling ("wait, did we not just got rid of ClearCase in order
>> to save such costs...?")
>> 
>> And naturally, the longer people have moved on with their lives,
>> the less interest they will have in returning to past projects.
> 
> 
> That leaves us as a community-driven project, and while I agree that
> the codebase is complex and quality matters (hey, we all keep crucial
> information in this thing!) that should not be a deterrent to anyone
> interested in getting involved.
> 
> We have a gigantic pool of users worldwide who depend on Subversion
> and for whom other software isn't the right fit, and we need help with
> many different skill areas besides coding, including translations,
> documentation, testing, improving the website, bug triaging, etc.,
> etc. Every little bit of help from each person counts and benefits
> everyone, and if each person did just a little bit, it would make a
> huge difference. It's like everyone putting a flower pot on their
> windowsill. Soon the whole city looks nicer.
> 
> Cheers,
> Nathan

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Nathan Hartman <ha...@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 10:37 AM Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 07:14:46AM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
> > It looks like the stashing functionality is still experimental. Do you think there will be more funding in the future to complete it or do you think it may remain unfinished for a long period of time?
> >
>
> I do not know any specifics about the funding arragements that were
> made for the staging feature. What I do know is what anyone can tell
> from public records such as our mailing list archives and in our commit
> history. Julian, like many others, is working in other jobs nowadays and
> has not actively contributed much to SVN during the last year or so.
>
> I suspect there are still some developers who would be open to the idea
> of returning to continue working on in-progress features if they could
> put food on the table in return. A simple fact is that any altruism
> these people have spent over years in order to provide this tool to
> communities and companies has largely run dry by now. While SVN grew
> up because many of its developers were on paid time since 2000, many
> were also willing to invest some of their free time to help out because
> this was a fun and challenging project to work on.
>
> But not many can afford to do such work in their free time forever, given
> the complexity of the subject matter, the expectations of quality that
> need to be met, and the fact that most users are now businesses which
> simply use SVN because it does not cost them a cent compared to similar
> proprietary offerings which are usually very expensive. I know this
> because over the course of about a decade I have helped many such
> companies move over to SVN from such platforms, and SVN works so well
> for many of them that most do not even see a need for a paid support
> contract to get help in case things go wrong. I have seen people in
> companies who wanted to pitch such things to their bosses but found
> themselves in a difficult spot when trying to justify a budget for
> SVN tooling ("wait, did we not just got rid of ClearCase in order
> to save such costs...?")
>
> And naturally, the longer people have moved on with their lives,
> the less interest they will have in returning to past projects.


That leaves us as a community-driven project, and while I agree that
the codebase is complex and quality matters (hey, we all keep crucial
information in this thing!) that should not be a deterrent to anyone
interested in getting involved.

We have a gigantic pool of users worldwide who depend on Subversion
and for whom other software isn't the right fit, and we need help with
many different skill areas besides coding, including translations,
documentation, testing, improving the website, bug triaging, etc.,
etc. Every little bit of help from each person counts and benefits
everyone, and if each person did just a little bit, it would make a
huge difference. It's like everyone putting a flower pot on their
windowsill. Soon the whole city looks nicer.

Cheers,
Nathan

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de>]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 07:14:46AM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
> It looks like the stashing functionality is still experimental. Do you think there will be more funding in the future to complete it or do you think it may remain unfinished for a long period of time?
> 

I do not know any specifics about the funding arragements that were
made for the staging feature. What I do know is what anyone can tell
from public records such as our mailing list archives and in our commit
history. Julian, like many others, is working in other jobs nowadays and
has not actively contributed much to SVN during the last year or so.

I suspect there are still some developers who would be open to the idea
of returning to continue working on in-progress features if they could
put food on the table in return. A simple fact is that any altruism
these people have spent over years in order to provide this tool to
communities and companies has largely run dry by now. While SVN grew
up because many of its developers were on paid time since 2000, many
were also willing to invest some of their free time to help out because
this was a fun and challenging project to work on.

But not many can afford to do such work in their free time forever, given
the complexity of the subject matter, the expectations of quality that
need to be met, and the fact that most users are now businesses which
simply use SVN because it does not cost them a cent compared to similar
proprietary offerings which are usually very expensive. I know this
because over the course of about a decade I have helped many such
companies move over to SVN from such platforms, and SVN works so well
for many of them that most do not even see a need for a paid support
contract to get help in case things go wrong. I have seen people in
companies who wanted to pitch such things to their bosses but found
themselves in a difficult spot when trying to justify a budget for
SVN tooling ("wait, did we not just got rid of ClearCase in order
to save such costs...?")

And naturally, the longer people have moved on with their lives,
the less interest they will have in returning to past projects.

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

It looks like the stashing functionality is still experimental. Do you think there will be more funding in the future to complete it or do you think it may remain unfinished for a long period of time?

Luke 

> On Dec 13, 2021, at 2:42 AM, Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 07:21:44PM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
>> That really is unfortunate to hear about the lack of funding. I see in the past few years there has been a lot of work done on the conflict resolver in version 10 and multiple stash implementations in versions 11+. Are those efforts being driven by people just working on it in their “spare time”?
>> 
> 
> Those efforts were funded while development on was on-going.

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de>]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2021 at 07:21:44PM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
> That really is unfortunate to hear about the lack of funding. I see in the past few years there has been a lot of work done on the conflict resolver in version 10 and multiple stash implementations in versions 11+. Are those efforts being driven by people just working on it in their “spare time”?
> 

Those efforts were funded while development on was on-going.

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

That really is unfortunate to hear about the lack of funding. I see in the past few years there has been a lot of work done on the conflict resolver in version 10 and multiple stash implementations in versions 11+. Are those efforts being driven by people just working on it in their “spare time”?

Luke

> On Dec 11, 2021, at 10:21 AM, Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 06:59:31AM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
>> Does the subversion project receive any funding from the ASF to hire
>> professional developers to complete more complex tasks or is development 100%
>> community driven and supported?
> 
> The ASF does not pay anyone for development. I think this is an unfortunate
> situation because many ASF projects slowly die off as funding dries up.
> I believe the ASF is unlikely to change this long-standing practice, even
> though there are other open source foundations which fund developers.
> The FreeBSD and OpenBSD foundations pay some development (see their
> financial reports), and apparently a new PHP foundataion is starting up
> with the sole purpose of funding PHP developers.
> 
> In the past many SVN developers were employed by companies who ran with
> business models related to Subversion. This is the funding model the ASF
> is promoting. However, as of a few years ago most such companies changed
> direction and are no longer employing any SVN developers. Many people have
> moved on as a result and are no longer active.
> 
> (Disclaimer: I still receive a small amount of indirect SVN-related funding
> via elego's SVN customer support. I occasionally use some of this time
> to work on various things in Subversion, even though this budget is not
> intended to fund development beyond customer-specific issues which can
> only be fixed in the code base. And it is not enough to cover complex tasks.)

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Stefan Sperling <st...@elego.de>]

On Sat, Dec 11, 2021 at 06:59:31AM -0600, Luke Mauldin wrote:
> Does the subversion project receive any funding from the ASF to hire
> professional developers to complete more complex tasks or is development 100%
> community driven and supported?

The ASF does not pay anyone for development. I think this is an unfortunate
situation because many ASF projects slowly die off as funding dries up.
I believe the ASF is unlikely to change this long-standing practice, even
though there are other open source foundations which fund developers.
The FreeBSD and OpenBSD foundations pay some development (see their
financial reports), and apparently a new PHP foundataion is starting up
with the sole purpose of funding PHP developers.

In the past many SVN developers were employed by companies who ran with
business models related to Subversion. This is the funding model the ASF
is promoting. However, as of a few years ago most such companies changed
direction and are no longer employing any SVN developers. Many people have
moved on as a result and are no longer active.

(Disclaimer: I still receive a small amount of indirect SVN-related funding
via elego's SVN customer support. I occasionally use some of this time
to work on various things in Subversion, even though this budget is not
intended to fund development beyond customer-specific issues which can
only be fixed in the code base. And it is not enough to cover complex tasks.)

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

Does the subversion project receive any funding from the ASF to hire professional developers to complete more complex tasks or is development 100% community driven and supported?

> On Dec 11, 2021, at 4:10 AM, Daniel Sahlberg <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Den lör 11 dec. 2021 10:54Bo Berglund <bo...@gmail.com> skrev:
>> On Fri, 10 Dec 2021 07:59:02 -0600, Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:
>> 
>> >Gotcha, thank you.
>> >
>> >> On Dec 10, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> ?On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:
>> >>> 
>> >>> I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this point?
>> >> 
>> >> ASF Infra uses the package provided by the Linux distro they are using
>> >> rather than building and maintaining their own package.
>> >> 
>> 
>> Why is a constrruction company involved in Subversion?
>> 
>> http://www.asfinfrastructure.com/about-us.php
>> 
>> Strange....
> 
> 
> ASF Infra is the group within Apache Software Foundation that is managing the infrastructure, ie servers and network. 
> 
> Kind regards 
> Daniel 

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Daniel Sahlberg <da...@gmail.com>]

Den lör 11 dec. 2021 10:54Bo Berglund <bo...@gmail.com> skrev:

> On Fri, 10 Dec 2021 07:59:02 -0600, Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>
> wrote:
>
> >Gotcha, thank you.
> >
> >> On Dec 10, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> ?On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was
> released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least
> upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this
> point?
> >>
> >> ASF Infra uses the package provided by the Linux distro they are using
> >> rather than building and maintaining their own package.
> >>
>
> Why is a constrruction company involved in Subversion?
>
> http://www.asfinfrastructure.com/about-us.php
>
> Strange....
>

ASF Infra is the group within Apache Software Foundation that is managing
the infrastructure, ie servers and network.

Kind regards
Daniel

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Bo Berglund <bo...@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 10 Dec 2021 07:59:02 -0600, Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:

>Gotcha, thank you.
>
>> On Dec 10, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> ?On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this point?
>> 
>> ASF Infra uses the package provided by the Linux distro they are using
>> rather than building and maintaining their own package.
>> 

Why is a constrruction company involved in Subversion?

http://www.asfinfrastructure.com/about-us.php

Strange....

-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com>]

Gotcha, thank you.

> On Dec 10, 2021, at 7:14 AM, Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this point?
> 
> ASF Infra uses the package provided by the Linux distro they are using
> rather than building and maintaining their own package.
> 
> Mark

Re: ASF Subversion version

[Mark Phippard <ma...@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 8:12 AM Luke Mauldin <lu...@icloud.com> wrote:
>
> I noticed that the ASF is still running Subversion 1.9.x which was released quite a few years ago. Does anyone know why they haven’t at least upgraded to the 10.x LTS release which itself is over 2 years old at this point?

ASF Infra uses the package provided by the Linux distro they are using
rather than building and maintaining their own package.

Mark