Alexis's Blog on TReCX

I've blogged in the past about some of the various Eclipse plugins there are available for use with subversion; these are Subclipse (which is now at version 1.0.1) and Subversive (which is now at version 1.0.0 RC1a). I had been favouring Subclipse, as it enabled with me to do all the typical operations I wanted (such as server-side copying) which Subversive didn't. However, what's finally won me over with Subversive is the excellent projections of refactorings into version control. What I mean is that you can rename a Java class and / or move what package it's in. Subversive keeps track of all this, so that when you come to commit your files all the version history is kept on (what is effectively) otherwise a "new" file. Subclipse can not do this at all; you have to carry out the intermediate steps all manually. On the other hand, I'm starting to suspect that Subversive not being able to perform server-side copying may have something to do with the Subversion configuration at sourceforge. Even if I still can't do these, I can perform the equivalent operations client-side instead. I also think that the views associated with subversion repository exploring are also better in Subversive. For example, if you have moved a file, you can clearly see where it was moved from.