(OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV

jkeenan1 has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I will soon be participating in a discussion at my workplace -- where over 30 developers write Perl scripts and modules as part of their responsibilities -- concerning migration from CVS to Subversion for version control. The sysadmin has already indicated we will be using Subversion 1.1 ('cause that's what comes with Debian stable) and that we will be using FSFS rather than Berkeley DB for the storage system.

But he hasn't reached a decision as to whether to have people connect to the server via svnserve or Apache DAV. I have no experience with either (I only have used Subversion on disk, not across networks) and the Subversion documentation cites pros and cons for both.

Without starting a flame war here, may I ask if there are Monks who have used both svnserve and Apache and can cite strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches?

Thanks.

Jim Keenan

2006-05-11 Retitled by GrandFather, as per Monastery guidelines

Comment on (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by perrin (Chancellor) on May 11, 2006 at 02:31 UTC
I doubt many people have used both. Just use whatever your admin finds easier to setup. I do find it very nice to be able to view the repository through a web browser, so tell you want something like ViewCVS or Trac as well if he picks svnserve. (The apache option allows some minimal browsing with no extra modules needed.)	[reply]
Re^2: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by nmerriweather (Friar) on Jun 07, 2006 at 03:41 UTC
no matter what you choose you really want to be running Trac trac gives you a nice changeset view, lets you browse the repo at any revision, and do a ton of things that svn just doesn't do on its own	[reply]
Re: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by kvale (Monsignor) on May 11, 2006 at 04:15 UTC
Congrats on the switch to Subversion; I've personally found it a lot more pleasant to work with than CVS. I have set up both svnserve and and DAV interfaces, just to try them out, and found svnserve much less fussy to setup. I stuck with svnserve as everyone here is comfortable with just a CLI. -Mark	[reply]
Re^2: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by wazoox (Prior) on May 11, 2006 at 07:26 UTC
I plainly agree. svnserve is easy to set up and use. And browsing the repository through Apache remains definetely possible anyway without DAV, but without the ability to upload of course.	[reply]
Re: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by adrianh (Chancellor) on May 11, 2006 at 08:33 UTC
Without starting a flame war here, may I ask if there are Monks who have used both svnserve and Apache and can cite strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches? Apache/DAV gives you a web browser view of the HEAD of your repo out of the box, allows you to use Apache based access controls to control read/write access to the repo, and allows you to mount the repository as a DAV volume on most OSes. svnserve allows you to leverage off any existing ssh access infrastructure you already have to the development box. Apache might be easier to get through a firewall since it's running over http(s). There is really not a lot of difference. I'd let your admin dude pick whatever would be most appropriate to your current set up. I've used both in different places and never really noticed either option making things significantly better/worse. Oh - and look at SVK once you've moved to subversion. Even if you don't use many of its distributed features it makes an excellent command line client.	[reply]
Re^2: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by jkeenan1 (Deacon) on May 11, 2006 at 15:51 UTC
Thanks to all who responded. I will pass your thoughts along to the sysadmins. Jim Keenan	[reply]
Re: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by stonecolddevin (Parson) on May 11, 2006 at 03:00 UTC
Good node, i've not been apt enough to set up either, nor had the time, but perhaps a better wording that would get you better results would be something along the lines of asking for both opinions instead of people who've used both. Just a suggestion :-) meh.	[reply]
Re: (OT) Subversion for Perl Development: svnserve vs Apache DAV by grantm (Parson) on Jun 07, 2006 at 09:28 UTC
I know I'm a month late but I just thought I'd chip in with a vote for svnserve. I found it much easier to set up than the DAV approach and not needing a parallel authentication scheme was a plus too. I also recently worked out how to access an SVN repository via a multi-hop SSH connection with no port forwarding. Try doing that with Apache DAV.	[reply]