I already fear that this may be a bit too specific since it’s a bit of a niche need, but here goes:
I’m hosting several Subversion repositories for my indie projects. So far, I just did the plumbing by hand and wrote Apache configs (hosting via mod_dav_svn
).
But if I look at all those shiny tools Git users can wield, I really wish for something with a sleek UI and the option to create repositories, manage users and display source and markdown that worked with Subversion.
I know (and have tried):
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Gitea - What I want, except Gitea is for… Git and I do Subversion. Gitea manages users, created repositories and displays their contents in a clean, useful way.
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VisualSVN Server - This would be what I’m looking for (WebUI), but it is Windows-only (I don’t get it, who in their right mind hosts development stuff on a Windows clunker?)
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Redmine - It’s a Ruby on Rails project. With the Zenmine theme, it almost looks like GitHub, but Redmine shies away from repository management and focuses more on project/issue management.
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Trac - A bug tracker with Subversion browser and timeline, written in Python. While aforementioned part is great, it can also (barely) manage users and permissions for a repository using an add-in.
As well as various abandoned PHP projects with grotesque UIs and which either never fully worked or broke somewhere along the road from PHP 5 to PHP 8.
Can anyone recommend a decent WebUI for Subversion that would let me create repositories, manage users and view repository contents in the browser? Eye candy preferred, as I’m already doing everything I need via CLI tools and WebSVN.
Gentlemen and -women, I have posted this in the hope that someone might know of a niche Subversion UI that I have missed so far. I know everyone means well, but up to here, zero people offered recommendations and all comments either have me to explain why I use Subversion or recommend Git outright
Why I use Subversion
I am already using Git where it makes sense, but believe it or not, apart from being a distributed VCS with decent merging, Git plays a weak game, especially in terms of branching, versatility, binary files and external linking.
I have several use cases, including game development assets weighing in from tens to hundreds of megabytes each, to audio production with 5-channel float64 clips that I store uncompressed and edit / clean incrementally. And I link individual assets, deep in the directory tree, into my projects. Absolutely trivial in Subversion, a complete blocker in Git. Even if Git somehow suddenly could do what I need, I wouldn’t want to tackle such a migration for at least a few more years.
One thing I like about SVN that, at least in the past, was not easy with Git is checking out sub directories.
One thing I do is check out svn+ssh://svn/home/svn/configs/server/etc and copy the .svn file over to /etc so that I can check in changes from the actual directory on my servers at home. I never found a good way to do that on Git. But, admittedly, I haven’t looked in a couple years.