The Subversion development team recently released version 1.4 of the Subversion client and server, which includes some handy improvements.

• `svn diff` can now optionally ignore whitespace and differences between platform end of line styles when computing the difference between files.
• OS X Keychain (OS X’s password store) support.
• Significant working-copy performance improvements.
• File size improvements when working with binary files.
• A handful of new command line options.
• More than 40 bugfixes.

It’s important to note that the Subversion development team warns that the working copy storage format, i.e. the “.svn” folders, has changed for 1.4, so if you are doing something along the lines of reading a working copy stored on an external drive from two different computers, both will need to be updated to Subversion 1.4. This limitation does not extend to clients using a server-side repository.

Most of our development these days happens on Macs, some G4 and some Intel. Either way, Metissian, the source for OS X binary builds of Subversion, hasn’t released new builds of 1.4 yet. I built my own copy of 1.4 using Dan Benjamin’s building instructions for Subversion on OS X for a PowerBook G4, simply substituting downloading the 1.4 release instead of 1.3.1.

However, recently I’ve transitioned to a shiny new MacBook Pro. When I went to use the same instructions to build Subversion 1.4, the configure step complained that I was missing the Apache Portable Runtime, a dependency of Subversion’s. Starting with Subversion 1.4, the Subversion team is distributing the dependencies separately form the Subversion source code. Once you download both Subversion 1.4.0 and its dependencies and extract them both to the same folder, Dan Benjamin’s original instructions work seamlessly.

After a refreshing trip to the coast, where I had the opportunity to see friends and business partners, I came back to not only great Texas weather, but also was very surprised to see the construction progress on our new space. It has taken an eternity to get to this point, but we are finally just a couple of short weeks away from the move. More pictures on the progress will be coming. Or, you can see our flickr library to see what’s happening!

We have doors! It is going to be soon now. Moving into our new space is finally around the corner. Stay tuned and we will have more pics…

The toughest thing we can ever do is to create and launch our own web site. Today we launched a major release. This is our coming out party.

We had our design for a few months before we were able to really focus on making it come to life. When we decided to step on the gas, the team was on board a thousand percent. What you see on our new web site has been a design that has been months in the making and then very fast on the coding. We had a few late nights, including one night last week where we all decided to punch out at about 4:00 am.

This was a united effort. Every single person at RD2 had a role. While some of us may have been spending a ton of hours on our new site, some of us focused more on doing the billable work to make it possible for others to focus more of their time on V3. In the end, everyone had a direct part.

I am so proud of the team. Never have I had the opportunity to work with such a focused group. The team at RD2 really came together on this one. Designers and Developers acted as one…a united front.

In the final analysis, we achieved what we wanted. Sure, there’s already an enhancements page on our wiki. But, what would you expect from such a talented group.

Great work, all of you. You blew me away!

RD2 v3

Chris