Apache Subversion is a version control option that is free to download and open source under the Apache 2.0 license.
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Digital.ai Release
Score 8.7 out of 10
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Digital.ai Release, formerly XebiaLabs XL Release, is a release management tool designed for enterprises that enables users to control and track releases, standardize processes, and bake compliance and security into software release pipelines. As a release orchestration tool, Digital.ai Release works specifically for continuous delivery, and enables teams across an organization to model and monitor releases, automate tasks within IT infrastructure, in order to cut release times and improve…
Subversion solves our software versioning problem by providing tools for conflict resolution when doing collaborative work on the same files and projects. We use it with TortoiseSVN and it works great for some of our projects with smaller teams. However, we have a need to make code reviews more and it is a little more difficult to do that in SVN, compared to Bitbucket and Git.
XL release fits very well when you need cross-team coordination in a release process where you want to coordinate an alpha or beta program with marketing as part of a major release process.
Refactoring the layout of a respoitory--or a part of a repository--can be a bit painful, especially for users with workspaces associated with the affected part of the repository. Not sure what could be done to make that better, but it would be nice if something was possible.
Folks coming from Git can have problems using Subversion. Again, not sure anything can (or should) be done to address that, but it is occasionally an issue.
While there are interesting alternatives, such a GIT, Subversion has been a breath of fresh air compared to its predecessors like CVS or Microsoft Source Safe (now called Team Foundation Server). Its ease of use and high adoption rate is going to keep me using this product for years to come.
The tool is easy to use, easy to navigate and learn. Manages releases with proper approvals in a systematic manner. Though it needs minor improvements in terms of pagination (data loading), access management, but, overall the tool helps in increasing productivity and less time for production deployments.
Support is not good at all. To this day, I have to mail my queries and their support site does not log in for me (me alone). But, upon contacting many times, no one helps with a proper response. Though good thing is, I get a proper response over mail too. But, being informative about the tool and not on the issues faced by users outside of the process to get support should also be addressed equally. Which is currently missing in support.
After Microsoft Visual SourceSafe was discontinued, we chose Subversion and it was a great choice. We were able to migrate to Apache Subversion very quickly and easily and benefited immediately from its non-locking workflow (SourceSafe required users to "lock" the file when editing to prevent editing conflicts from other users, whereas Subversion allows multiple users to edit the same file simultaneously and then merge conflicts later.)
While we still use Apache Subversion for our legacy projects, we've migrated to Git and GitHub for our new projects as that is the new "cool kid" and it provides some benefits such as distributed and offline development. But Git is more complex than Apache Subversion and not as easy to learn.
Deployment and release management can be done in various ways. But, XL Release or Digita.ai, helps in simplifying the process with predefined plugins, pre-developed security features, etc that help manage and process deployment cycles quicker and in a processed way.
It allowed us to deliver the right files to our customer without "clobbering" previous releases, making for a far more satisfied customer.
It allowed our developers to work on two releases in parallel (plus an occasional third, for emergency fixes).
With some simple hooks, it allowed us to set up a system where code was was automatically deployed to test servers as soon as developers committed it, making testing easier. This was made easier by virtue of being a ColdFusion project, which requires no compilation. However, that is possible for compiled code with a continuous integration system like Jenkins.
