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Copyright © 2018 The Apache Software Foundation, Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. Apache, Apache Subversion, and the Apache feather logo are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation. Subversion and the Apache Subversion logo are registered trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation.
Apache Subversion 1.10 is a superset of all previous Subversion releases, and is as of the time of its release considered the current "best" release. Any feature or bugfix in 1.0.x through 1.9.x is also in 1.10, but 1.10 contains features and bugfixes not present in any earlier release. The new features will eventually be documented in a 1.10 version of the free Subversion book (svnbook.red-bean.com).
This page describes only major changes. For a complete list of changes, see the 1.10 section of the CHANGES file.
Older clients and servers interoperate transparently with 1.10 servers and clients. However, some of the new 1.10 features may not be available unless both client and server are the latest version. There are also cases where a new feature will work but will run less efficiently if the client is new and the server old.
There is no need to dump and reload your repositories. Subversion 1.10 servers can read and write to repositories created by earlier versions. To upgrade an existing server installation, just install the newest libraries and binaries on top of the older ones.
Subversion 1.10 maintains API/ABI compatibility with earlier releases, by only adding new functions, never removing old ones. A program written to any previous 1.x API can both compile and run using 1.10 libraries. However, a program written for 1.10 cannot necessarily compile or run against older libraries.
There may be limited cases where the behavior of old APIs has been slightly modified from previous releases. These are cases where edge cases of the functionality has been deemed buggy, and therefore improved or removed. Please consult the API errata for more detailed information on what these APIs are and what impact these changes may have.
| New Feature | Minimum Client1 | Minimum Server | Minimum Repository | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improved path-based authorization | any | 1.10 | any | Existing authz configurations may need to be adjusted. |
| New interactive conflict resolver | 1.10 | any | any | Use SVN 1.8 and above clients only for best results. |
| LZ4 compression over the wire in http:// and svn:// connections | 1.10 | 1.10 | any | |
| LZ4 compression in the backend storage | any | 1.10 | 1.10 | FSFS only |
| 1Reminder: when using the file:// repository access method, the Subversion program is both the client and the server. | ||||
Subversion 1.10 uses the same working copy format as Subversion 1.8 and 1.9.
Before using Subversion 1.10 with an existing Subversion 1.7 or older working copy, users will be required to run the svn upgrade command to upgrade working copy metadata to the new format. This command may take a while in some cases, and for some users, it may be more practical to simply checkout a new working copy.
Note: Subversion 1.10 cannot upgrade working copies that a 1.6 client would have refused to operate upon before an svn cleanup was run (with a 1.6 client). In other words, before upgrading to 1.8 or newer, a 1.6 or older client must be used to run svn cleanup on all 1.6 or older working copies that require cleanup. Likewise, Subversion 1.10 cannot upgrade corrupt working copies. Unfixable problems can arise from missing or corrupt meta-data inside .svn directories. Such damage to the working copy is permanent, and cannot be fixed even if svn cleanup is run prior to the upgrade.
If your working copy does not upgrade cleanly, please check out a new one.
There are some additional specific areas where changes made in this release might necessitate further adjustment by administrators or users. We'll cover those in this section.
Since "1.10.0" is smaller than "1.9.0" when considered as ASCII strings, scripts that compare Subversion versions as strings may fail to correctly determine which of "1.10.0" and "1.9.0" is the more recent one. Such scripts should be changed to compare Subversion version numbers correctly: as tuples of integers, with an optional suffix for development or pre-release versions. See the Subversion release numbering documentation for details. (Programs written against the C API or the various bindings should refer to the svn_version_* interfaces.)
The improved path-based authorization changes the behaviour of some existing authz files.
The 1.9 and earlier implementations allowed multiple rules for the same path:
[/some/path] userA = r [/some/path] userB = rw
In 1.9 this would define access for both userA and userB, in 1.10 this raises an error and no access is possible.
The 1.9 and earlier implementations allowed multiple entries matching the same name, alias or group and the last match applied:
[/some/path] user = rw user = r &alias = rw &alias = r @group = rw @group = r
In 1.9 the final, read-only, match for user, &alias and @group would be selected while 1.10 combines all the lines to give read-write access. The 1.10 implementation may change in future releases, perhaps to make this case an error.
The 1.9 implementation combined the global and per-repository rules for the same path:
[/some/path] userA = rw [repository:/some/path] userB = r
In 1.9 this would define access for both userA and userB, in 1.10 the per-repository rule overrides the global rule and this only defines access for userB. The 1.10 implementation may change in future releases, but the exact change is still being discussed on the dev mailing list.
The svnadmin lock, svnadmin unlock, and svnadmin rmlocks subcommands print the locked path differently.
In 1.9 and earlier, the path would be printed out in exactly the form it was input. In 1.10, the path is printed in "canonical" form: with dot components (foo/./bar) elided and multiple slashes (foo//bar) compressed to one. The path also starts with a slash in the output, regardless of whether a leading slash was present in the input.
Example:
$ svnadmin-1.9 lock r //iota jrandom logmsg opaquelocktoken:42 '//iota' locked by user 'jrandom'. $ svnadmin-1.9 unlock r //iota jrandom opaquelocktoken:42 '//iota' unlocked by user 'jrandom'. $ svnadmin-1.10 lock r //iota jrandom logmsg opaquelocktoken:42 '/iota' locked by user 'jrandom'. $ svnadmin-1.10 unlock r //iota jrandom opaquelocktoken:42 '/iota' unlocked by user 'jrandom'. $
Only the output is changed. The set of valid inputs and the behaviour of svnadmin on them are unchanged. svnadmin continues to accept paths either with or without multiple slashes, dot components, and so on as command-line arguments.
The behaviour of svnserve when built without support for Cyrus SASL transport has changed.
In Subversion 1.9 and earlier, svnserve, when built without SASL support, would ignore the svnserve.conf use-sasl setting; In Subversion 1.10, svnserve, when built without SASL support, errors out if use-sasl is set to true.
svnserve's behaviour is otherwise unchanged. In particular, the behaviour of builds with SASL support is unchanged.
An API erratum is available.
Some binary distributions of this new Subversion version may link to a newer OpenSSL version than previous distributions. This may lead to different behavior.
Especially, some distributions may link this Subversion release to OpenSSL 1.1 instead of OpenSSL 1.0. OpenSSL 1.1 does not allow md5 hashes for CA keys anymore. When using client certificates signed by such a CA, the new Subversion client may fail with An error occurred during SSL communication. You can analyze the underlying cause by first converting the client certificate from p12 to pem by
openssl pkcs12 -in path/to/svn/cert.p12 -out cert.pemand then testing the SSL connection by
openssl s_client -connect example.com:443 -servername example.com -cert cert.pemIf this test connection fails with ca md too weak then creating new CA keys using sha256 instead of md5 and corresponding new client certificates should solve the problem.
Subversion 1.10 provides a new implementation of path-based authorization with improved performance and wildcard support. There are some compatibility issues.
Existing authz rules come in two flavours, repository-specific and global:
[repos:/path] [/path]In these rules, /path is always matched literally.
The new authz rule parser supports two new forms for rules which may contain wildcards in the path element:
[:glob:repos:/path] [:glob:/path]
The following wildcard syntax elements are supported in glob rules:
All wildcards apply to full path segments only, i.e. * never matches /, except for the case where /**/ matches zero or more path segments. For example, /*/**/* will match any path which contains at least 2 segments and is equivalent to /**/*/* as well as /*/*/**.
Because a glob rule is not required to contain wildcards in the path, two sections with different names may apply to the same path. For example, the following two rules are identical:
[/path/without/wildcards] [:glob:/path/without/wildcards]The new authz rule parser detects and rejects such collisions.
The old authz parser, in Subversion 1.9 and earlier, allowed syntactic entries which grant write-only access. For example:
[/] * = wThe new parser flags such entries as invalid. Neither the old nor the new authz implementation support write-only access.
Subversion 1.10 provides much better interactive resolution of tree conflicts than previous releases. Interactive conflict resolution has been completely redesigned and rewritten. This new conflict resolver supersedes the first implementation introduced in Subversion 1.5.
The new conflict resolver searches repository history for structural changes (additions, deletions, copies, and moves) which conflict with local changes in the working copy and cause tree conflicts. Tree conflicts are now described in detail, including revision numbers and names of authors of conflicting changes. In previous versions of Subversion, the task of finding such information was left to the user. Automating this task is a huge usability improvement.
The new conflict resolver is able to detect moves and renames in repository history, and take them into account while modifying the local working copy. This makes seamless merging between branches possible even if one or both branches rename files or directories. For best results, all SVN clients committing to the repository should be at version 1.8 or higher.
The new conflict resolver will avoid asking users about resolution options whenever there is a only one reasonable course of action. For example, if a file was moved to another location in the repository, the conflict resolver will attempt to resolve the tree conflict on behalf of the user by performing the same move locally if necessary. This allows users to focus their attention on conflicts which cannot be resolved automatically.
Because detection of moves and renames involves heuristics, detection is not perfect and won't work in all conceivable cases. For a detailed description of how incoming moves and renames are detected, see How Subversion's conflict resolver handles incoming moves.
The conflict resolver user interface remains largely unchanged. Like in previous releases, the resolver will be started automatically if an update, merge, or switch operation ends with unresolved conflicts. It can also be started on demand by running the svn resolve command. For more information, run svn help resolve after installing Subversion 1.10.
In some situations, resolving one tree conflict will cause new other tree conflicts to appear. The svn resolve command will keep iterating over such conflicts until none are left, or until the user decides to quit the operation.
The new conflict resolver can be driven interactively with svn resolve, from Subversion's client API (in C and other language bindings), or with the non-interactive svnconflict tool which is intended for use in shell scripts.
The new conflict resolver offers a variety of automated tree conflict resolution options which users can choose from. Not all kinds of tree conflicts can yet be described and resolved. The options available in Subversion 1.10.0 are listed in the table below. In this table, the items on the incoming and local side are either both files or both directories. Most cases where files clash with directories are not handled yet.
Future releases of Subversion will continue to provide enhancements for the new conflict resolver. We expect to add coverage of additional conflict cases and add additional resolution options even in patch releases (i.e. in 1.10.1, 1.10.2, etc.).
| local change | incoming change | operation | resolution options |
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update, switch, merge |
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update, switch, merge |
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update, switch |
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update, switch |
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update, switch, merge |
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Subversion 1.10 adds support for LZ4 compression as an alternative to the zlib compression that has been used in the previous versions. LZ4 offers fast compression and decompression while still maintaining a decent compression ratio. Using LZ4 compression can significantly improve performance of most of the Subversion read and write operations, especially for repositories containing large files.
LZ4 compression is now used by default for the on-disk data in repositories with filesystem format 8. Also, Subversion 1.10 adds support for automatic negotiation and use of LZ4 compression over the wire for http:// and svn:// connections when it is supported by both endpoints.
The default filesystem format is now version 8, introduced in 1.10. The format bump is required to allow using LZ4 compression for the data that is stored on the disk. (The svnadmin info command displays the filesystem format number of a repository.)
Existing repositories can be upgraded to the new format with the svnadmin upgrade command.
Existing repositories with the configured compression-level option in the fsfs.conf file will continue to use zlib compression. In order to start using LZ4 compression for such repositories, consider setting the compression = lz4 option in the fsfs.conf file.
In order to speed up read and write operations for existing repositories, consider recompressing the data stored in them with LZ4. This can be achieved by performing a full dump/load cycle into a new format 8 repository created with Subversion 1.10.
Deltas transferred between Subversion 1.10 clients and servers may be compressed with LZ4. The actual choice of the compression algorithm depends on the used protocol, environment and its configuration — see below.
For the http:// protocol, use of LZ4 compression depends on the values of the server-side SVNCompressionLevel directive, client-side http-compression configuration option and on the network capabilities. LZ4 compression generally offers much faster compression and decompression speeds, but slightly worse compression ratio than zlib. By default, it is only preferred for low latency networks where the overhead associated with transferring the additional amount of data is assumed to be negligible.
On the server-side, SVNCompressionLevel 0 can be used to disable compression altogether. The special value of SVNCompressionLevel 1 forces the use of LZ4 compression for clients that support it. All other values result in preferring zlib compression with the respective compression level. Note that the negotiated algorithm is still subject to the client's configuration. For example, even if the server is configured to prefer zlib compression over LZ4, a client may still negotiate the use of LZ4 compression when its http-compression option is set to auto.
On the client-side, setting http-compression to either yes or no will enable or disable compression that is then negotiated based on the server's configuration. The default value of auto will result in preferring LZ4 compression for low latency networks and zlib compression otherwise.
Below is the table explaining the used compression algorithm in each combination of the client- and server-side configuration options:
| 1.10 Server with SVNCompressionLevel: |
1.9 and older Server with SVNCompressionLevel: |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subversion Client | 0 | 1 | 2-9 (default: 5)* | 0 | 1-9 (default: 5)* |
| 1.10, http-compression: auto*, low latency | None | LZ4 | LZ4 | None | zlib |
| 1.10, http-compression: auto*, high latency | None | LZ4 | zlib | None | zlib |
| 1.10, http-compression: yes | None | LZ4 | zlib | None | zlib |
| 1.10, http-compression: no | None | None | None | None | None |
| 1.9 and older, http-compression: yes* | None | zlib | zlib | None | zlib |
| 1.9 and older, http-compression: no | None | None | None | None | None |
* Default configurations
For the svn:// protocol, use of LZ4 compression depends on the value of the server-side -c/--compression option. A value of 0 disables compression entirely; any other value causes lz4 or zlib compression to be used. At this time, lz4 is always used in preference to zlib when both are supported by the remote end.
Shelving (issue #3625) is the ability to put aside an uncommitted change in the WC, as if putting it on a shelf, in order to work on something else, and later bring the change back in to the WC. It is very similar to saving a patch file created by svn diff and later applying it with svn patch.
The following svn commands are new; see their help for details.
WARNING: The shelving feature is designated "EXPERIMENTAL" in 1.10. It is being released in an early form while development continues. It is expected to change significantly during and after the 1.10.x series. There is no promise of backward compatibility while it remains experimental.
svn log --search is now case-insensitive and ignores diacriticals when matching words. This makes it easier to match paths and log messages which happen to contain upper-case and non-English characters.
You may now specify one or more glob patterns in a svn ls request. Note that most shells require globs to be put in quotation marks to be passed as-is to SVN. Example:
svn ls svn://server/repo --recursive --search "readme*"Against a Subversion 1.10 server, this command will be executed as a single, efficient server-side query.
svnbench now displays its wall-clock run time and the total number of bytes transferred across the network. The --with-no-revprops option which did not actually work in Subversion 1.9 has been fixed.
The new option --accept recommended will automatically resolve tree conflicts for which a recommended resolution option is available. Any other conflicts will be postponed.
Note that --accept recommended is now the default behaviour if the --non-interactive option is used. In previous releases, the --non-interactive option implied --accept postpone by default instead.
Revprop caching was an optional FSFS feature in previous releases but is now always enabled. In previous releases revprop caching could be enabled for mod_dav_svn via the SVNCacheRevprops directive, and for svnserve by the --cache-revprops command line option. That directive and command line option are now silently ignored and revprop caching is enabled for all FSFS access.
A new --no-flush-to-disk option has been added to the svnadmin load command. This option can be used to dramatically speed up the load process when there is no need to ensure that the resulting data survives a system crash or power loss, e.g. when loading a dump file into a fresh repository.
A new --normalize-props option has been added to the svnadmin load command. This option can be used to automatically repair non-LF line endings in properties such as svn:log or svn:ignore. Such invalid line endings were accepted by older servers and can be found in repository dumps of older repositories, but are rejected by Subversion 1.6 and later.
Calling svnadmin load with --normalize-props will automatically repair all invalid property line endings found in the dumpstream, thus ensuring that the appropriate values are loaded into the repository.
svnadmin can now dump and load revision properties independently of other changes made to the repository. This is useful because revision properties are not versioned but their values may change if the administrator has configured the repository's pre-revprop-change hook.
svnadmin dump-revprops will save the current values of all revision properties to a dump file. svnadmin load-revprops can be used to set revision properties in a repository to the values saved in a dump file.
New --include and --exclude options have been added to the svnadmin dump command. Using --exclude or --include gives results equivalent to authz-based path exclusions. In particular, when the source of a copy is excluded, the copy is transformed into an add (unlike in 'svndumpfilter').
A --pattern option allows the include or exclude rules to contain wildcards (the same as in 'svndumpfilter').
RA-serf now sends deltas compressed when possible, unless compression is disabled by the 'http-compression = no' client configuration option. This is enabled for servers that advertise support for this specific (new) capability.
mod_dav_svn servers now advertise this specific (new) capability.
There are some known issues in the Subversion 1.10 releases. These may be fixed in later 1.10.x releases. Selected issues are listed here; see the issue tracker for details and for other issues.
Broken in 1.10.0 and 1.10.1. See also path-based authorization compatibility.
The Subversion 1.9.x line is now the old stable version. This means that 1.9.x will still receive security relevant fixes as well as bugfixes. While we will evaluate any bugreport with regards to its severity, there might be issues with a lower severity which will only get fixed in 1.10.x, particularly if the patches would be invasive, destabilizing, and/or require a significant investment to get backported to the old stable version.
Therefore, if you are running into an issue with the old stable version which has already been fixed in the latest version, we might ask you to upgrade to that version to resolve the issue.
The Subversion 1.8.x line is end of life (EOL). This doesn't mean that your 1.8 installation is doomed; if it works well and is all you need, that's fine. "End of life" just means we've stopped accepting bug reports against 1.8.x versions, and will not make any more 1.8.x releases.