to SVN or not to SVN

Andy C – 2009-09-05 3:14 pm

That is the question.

People choosing to use Habari have a choice of which version of the software to run:

  1. The current, stable released version.
  2. The latest, bleeding edge development code known as HEAD or trunk.

Decisions, decisions. And all of this so soon after it took you three months to bite the bullet and actually try Habari.

The latest, stable version of Habari is release 0.6.2 which was released in May 2009. If a week is a long time in politics, then four months is an eon in open source, software development.

Habari uses subversion for configuration management and the latest version of the source code in the subversion repository is commonly known as 'trunk', 'svn head' or simply 'head'.

So what are the considerations when electing for 'stable' or 'latest' ?

Pros of using the stable version

  • Err, well, it's stable. The software is fixed (apart from patches to address security issues).
  • You will be able to get help from the Habari community.
  • If you're developing code, the development environment is stable (which helps).

Cons of using the stable version

  • Some recently developed plugins and themes may only be available for the latest version of Habari and not the stable version.
  • You won't be able to use, evaluate and test brand new functionality as soon as it is available.
  • Most plugins and themes should always be available for the latest stable version. It's just finding the exact version that's hard.
  • If you're developing code, the community will scream 'Hey, that plugin is great but have you got a version for HEAD ?'

Pros of using the latest version

  • Most of the Habari developers are using HEAD or a version close to it.
  • In the event of significant changes which modify (break) core functionality, the community tend to quickly pull together make the necessary changes. Mainly because they want their blogs available too.
  • You will still be able to get help from the Habari community
  • You learn more as you see changes being committed and tickets being raised.
  • If disaster strikes, you can easily revert to an earlier SVN version of Habari using SVN.

Cons of using the latest version

  • There's an element of risk; core data structures may change under your feet breaking your blog, all your plugins and your themes.
  • You will need access to a subversion client and know a little on how to use svn; However, I manage to get by with '$ svn update'

Personally, I started by using the 'stable' version of Habari but soon got bored of that so quickly installed the subversion software on my Bluehost server and continue to use trunk and tend to sync up every week or so.

What about you ? To SVN or not to SVN ? Please feel free to leave your verdict in the comments.

5 Comments on to SVN or not to SVN

  1. For my business site, which I can't afford to have break, I prefer to stay on a stable version. All my personal sites run head. To run head you don't really have to be familiar with svn. The latest build is always available at http://habariproject.org/dist/habari_head.zip. You can upload it to your site, and unzip it to upgrade. That is, of course, more work than using svn.

    Rick Cockrum - 2009-09-06 3:54 pm

  2. I'm not SVNing at all - instead I use the nightly builts :D
    BTW: The stable versions of Habari are more unstable than the developer ones - except directly after a new release; then you oughta wait about a month or so before helping yourself to the latest one.

    cu, w0lf.

    fwolf - 2009-09-07 9:40 pm

  3. Rick, Wolf

    Thanks for popping by. I'd completely forgotten that a nightly build HEAD was available which may be the perfect solution for some Habari users.

    Means I have to add option 3. now :-)

    Andy

    Andy C - 2009-09-07 9:51 pm

  4. Here's another option, my preferred; use svn whether you're using the stable version or HEAD.

    If you want to use a particular version use the tag for that version. For example, the latest stable is http://svn.habariproject.org/habari/tags/0.6.2. When there's a new release you can simply run svn switch to the new stable tag. It's also easy to merge specific changes from trunk into your working copy of a tag if there's something that's been fixed or improved that you want before a new release.

    Michael C. Harris - 2009-09-08 5:51 pm

  5. Thanks Michael. All good hints and tips for people of all experience levels.

    Exactly the type of informed and useful responses I was hoping for when I wrote the post.

    Andy C - 2009-09-08 6:16 pm
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