What are the pros and cons of the SVN plugins for

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?

Answer 1

The advantage of Subclipse over Subversive... IT ACTUALLY WORKS!

I used Subclipse a long time ago when developing a collaborative plugin for Eclipse that depended on Subclipse. The Subclipse part of the plugin was never a problem, although the whole Ant thing still confuses me a bit, but the good part is you don't have to understand how the Ant part works to know how to use it.

I am attempting to install PDT today (which is a whole other blog) and then Subversive because, like many, it is portrayed as "The Eclipse SVN Plugin". I was unable to install the four connectors at once, so I had to install them one at a time and one at a time I tried them, and one at a time it could not authenticate with the SVN server.

I am trying PDT and Subversive, because I want to SAVE time, not spending more of it on different issues with a plugin.

I uninstalled Subversive, installed Subclipse, and connected just like that.

Save yourself the time and hassle, go Subclipse from the start.

Answer 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.

Answer 3

I chose to go with Subclipse since it is most closely associated with the Subversion project and so more likely to better handle the core SVN functionality. If at all it fails to perform any function then I have TortoiseSVN as a backup.

Answer 4

Up until about May 2008 I was using Subclipse, but due to issues with some projects, I've switched over to Subversive and am using that with no issues. If you are doing something fancy like headless Buckminster builds, then Subversive is definitely the one to go with.

Answer 5

Subversive has more advantages than the Subclipse as listed below. But just one feature Subversion does not have is so critical about using branches. So we have to use Subclipse.

Subversive advantages:

• View and icons are more informative
• After commit sync items are refreshed, committed file is closed.

Subclipse advantage

• ability to compare two branches

Answer 6

For me neither is better or worse, but Subversive is the default SVN plugin in Eclipse Ganymede platform, so there's a chance that it's better integrated with Eclipse.