From Subversion 1.4 to Subversion 1.5

Last week, we upgraded our development environment from Subversion 1.4 running on Apache 2.0 to Subversion 1.5 running on Apache 2.2. The primary reason for this upgrade is the support of relative URLs in the svn:externals property introduced in the new version of Subversion. 

The upgrade process was smooth and easy. Here are the steps we followed:   

1. Stopped our existing Apache Server
   
2. Backed up our Subversion repository 
   
3. Downloaded and installed Apache 2.2.9
   
4. Downloaded and installed Subverstion 1.5.2
   
5. Configured httpd.conf configuration file for our new Apache server and started the server
6. Upgraded our repository by executing svnadmin upgrade
   
7. Upgraded our indexes by executing svn-populate-node-origins-index
   
8. Upgraded client tools - we installed Tortoise 1.5.3 and Ankh 2.0
   
9. Upgraded Team City automated build and continuous integration server to the latest version 3.1.2
   

• In the past, in order to use Windows authentication with Subversion we had to write a custom mod_auth_sspi.so. We did not have to do anything for 1.5. Loading modules in the correct order and referencing them from the Subversion application folder did the trick for us:     
  

LoadModule sspi_auth_module modules/mod_auth_sspi.so
LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so
LoadModule dav_svn_module C:/Apps/svn-win32-1.5.2/bin/mod_dav_svn.so
LoadModule authz_svn_module C:/Apps/svn-win32-1.5.2/bin/mod_authz_svn.so               
 
<Location /svn>
DAV svn
SVNPath C:\Dev\Repository

     AuthName "SVN Server"
     AuthType SSPI
     SSPIAuth On
     SSPIAuthoritative On
     SSPIDomain OURDOMAINNAME
AuthzSVNAccessFile "C:/Repository/conf/authz"
     SSPIOfferBasic on
     Require valid-user     
</Location>   

• Team City 3.1.2 does support Subversion 1.5, but unfortunately does not support relative URL's in the svn:externals property.