Is VisualSVN Server generally viewed as a trustworthy SVN server?

Question

is VisualSVN Server generally viewed as a trustworthy SVN server?

Answer 1

My company has been using it. As far as I can tell, it's just a custom distribution of SVN + Apache rolled into an installer, so its "trustworthiness" will be the same as Apache's and subversion's.

Answer 2

I've been using VisualSVN Server for a few weeks along with the VisualSVN client for Visual Studio. It has been trouble free and setting it up was easier than falling off a log. The management console lets you create repositories and folders, perform simple operations on them (delete, import, etc) and set user permissions (Active Directory Integrated or SVN authentication). It just works and does just enough and no more. I think they got it exactly right.

I'm a Windows Server guy so I was a bit dubious about using Apache, but it is completely transparent and integrated into VisualSVN, if they hadn't mentioned it on the web site, I'd never have known I was running Apache. If you wanted to host other things in Apache too, then I guess you'd want to do things differently, but I wanted a turnkey solution and VisualSVN provided it.

Answer 3

I've had one big issue with it.

The issue I have is that the repositories are saved with Windows line endings (Carriage Return + Line Feed) instead of the Linux line endings (Line Feed) when the repositories are in the file system format.

This has prevented me from porting the repository (with all revisions in tact) from a local network Windows server VisualSVN hosting to a public Linux SVN hosting. Since all my code is in Windows code if I change the Windows line endings to the Linux ones I mess up all my code. SVN admin tools in Linux won't recognize the repository if I don't convert them though.

So I can move an export of the code into a public repository, but I lose all the previous revision history which is a huge inconvenience but not a show-stopper.

Answer 4

Can you define Trustworthy? Do you mean not likely to crash or corrupt data, or do you mean able to handle a lot of traffic, or do you mean not exploited or exploitable easily?

SVN + Apache fare well in each of those categories, but I don't know what the custom portion of the installer has in it.

Answer 5

We've been using it for a while without any issues; apart from the GUIs it's the same Apache/SVN base as every other server. It's nice being able to upgrade it with an MSI, and it has a nice Windows GUI for handling AD integration, certificate management etc. They also seem to be pretty quick at getting updates out. The only two negatives (certainly when I last checked) are:

1. You are restricted to http/https access unless you want to manually set things up.
2. When you decide you want https you are stick with JUST https, you don't seem to be able to run both http and https together.

Answer 6

I've used it since a few years without any issue, it is leightweight and efficient. But heavily integrated under windows (which is not at all a problem for me)

As an alternative, Collabnet Subversion Edge looks like to be a good product but I didn't tried it.