What are the pros and cons of the SVN plugins for Eclipse, Subclipse and Subversive?

Question

SVN in Eclipse is spread into two camps. The SVN people have developed a plugin called Subclipse. The Eclipse people have a plugin called Subversive. Broadly speaking they both do the same things. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

Solution 1

Both are very similar but Subversive is the "eclipse svn provider". I primarily use Subversive because of a few convenient features:

Grouping of history

When I'm browsing the history of a branch instead of just seeing a bunch of rows for every commit it can group commits by today, week, etc.

Mapping of trunk, branches, and tags

Subversive assumes the default svn layout: trunk, branches, tags (which you can change), so whenever you want to tag or branch it is one click and you provide the name of the tag or branch.

Like I said these are minor differences that I just find convenient. Both work great with mylyn, but overall there really isn't a whole lot of differences with these two extensions.

Merging with Subversive is a pain though (haven't tried Subclipse), I've never been able to successfully merge. The preview of the merge is great but it would never complete the merge or it will take way to long. Most of the time I complete merging through the command line without any issues.

Solution 2

I will take a crack at answering this. I am a project lead for Subclipse, and I manage all of the releases, etc. for the project. So my biases are obvious.

I am not going to talk too much about Subversive. Clearly, there are users that use it and like it. Functionally the products are very similar as both are mature products.

One thing I do want to comment on is this notion that somehow Subversive is the "official Eclipse" plugin. That is just not true, as there is no such designation. Eclipse is an open-source foundation and any project that wants to follow their rules, process and IP requirements, etc. can host their project with the foundation. That does not make you any more or less official than any other plugin.

I will also note that Subversive has remained in the "Incubation" phase since its inception, and it does not appear to me that it will ever meet the requirements for graduation. As you can see here, there has been only one committer on the project and commit activity has dwindled to very low levels.

Subversive - SVN Team Provider

So why should you use Subclipse? We are actively involved with Subversion itself. I am a Subversion PMC member and help maintain the Java language bindings so that we (and other projects like Subversive) can use the API.

We work directly with Subversion to define and improve the API and make sure necessary features are exposed to clients like Subclipse. We also work closely and collaborate with the Visual Studio integration (AnkhSVN) and TortoiseSVN teams to make sure there is a relatively consistent user experience across clients.

Subclipse is still actively maintained and we maintain support for Eclipse versions 3.2 to 4.2. We are always trying to listen to feedback and incorporate ideas from the community. The recent 1.8.x releases include internal changes that greatly improve performance of Eclipse when working with large projects (that is when you really see it).

Subclipse has led the way in areas like merge tracking support, where we worked closely with the Subversion team in first adding this feature in 1.5 and then evolving it in subsequent releases. We were often the initial consumers of new API and provided the project with the feedback needed to harden the feature. We also introduced a graphical revision graph feature a couple years ago, becoming the first to bring this long asked for feature to Eclipse users.

If there are specific UI features in Subversive that people would like to see made in Subclipse, I would encourage you to visit our community and engage in our discussion forums. Maybe other users share your views and we can improve the UI together.

Forum [Subclipse-users].

Eclipse 4.2 is the latest release at the time of this post, but it is safe to assume that Subclipse will support all future Eclipse releases as they are made.

Solution 3

With every new version of Eclipse, I install Subversive, because it's the standard provided by Eclipse. And every time, it has issues recognizing my pre-existing projects.

So I end up uninstalling Subversive and installing Subclipse instead, which works marvellously. I also frequently use SVN from the command line as well as in Eclipse, and Subclipse has no problems with this.

Solution 4

If you do much merging with Subversion then you will probably prefer CollabNet Desktop - Eclipse Edition. You have to register an account with CollabNet to get the download, but it is free. It is essentially Subclipse with a better merge UI.

I am not affiliated with CollabNet.

CollabNet has made their improved merge client available to non-registered users of Subclipse. You get it by selecting the CollabNet Merge Client feature when installing Subclipse from the update site.

Solution 5

I would say Subclipse, as I couldn't even get Subversive working ;)

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