Nathaniel,

Thanks for the follow-up to both my post and Oliver's above. After a 
several month period last year with no visible presence here on the part of 
the Versions developers, I appreciate the fact that you and other Black 
Pixel reps are monitoring and participating in these discussions (and I'm 
guessing I'm not the only one who feels that way).

With respect to your follow-up to Oliver, I think it might be safer to say 
that most (but not all) graphical clients like versions are not just merely 
wrappers around the installed CLI versions of the SVN client(s) installed 
on the host. Some are, some aren't; some editors with SVN support allow you 
to choose how they are to be configured with respect to SVN capability.

Your point regarding the changes in SVN v1.7 is absolutely relevant; from 
the reading I've done, there were a couple of fundamental changes that 
differentiate this change from others to date in terms of the potential 
impact to clients using the API.

I can't speak for others on the list, but from where I sit, here are the 
sources of my frustration:
1. SVN v1.7 has been out now in some form since mid-June 2011. I recognize 
two things about that date: Black Pixel probably wasn't even in the picture 
at that point, and that was the first alpha release. That being said, 
though, we're now 8 months past the earliest version and 4 months past the 
official release date with nothing concrete from Black Pixel as to when to 
expect support for SVN v1.7.x. It doesn't seem unreasonable for there to be 
some expectations on the parts of users that it would be supported by now.

2. Other SVN clients are there or are moving: TortoiseSVN (one of the more 
popular clients on the Windows side) clearly invested in getting their 
client out early and in conjunction with the official release. Syntevo 
(with SmartSVN) has announced preliminary SVN v1.7 support in their "early 
access" builds within the past week. Zennaware (with Cornerstone) as 
indicated availability by late this month. For those of us working in 
environments with developers using other OS's (or multiple OS's ourselves), 
this lack of SVN v1.7 support in our preferred and purchased client is 
getting to be a bigger and bigger problem as more time passes.

3. You reference the post from the Zennaware site about their desire to get 
it right, and how that has factored into the delay between the release of 
SVN v1.7 and support for that in their product. As a developer, I 
understand and respect that perspective. I also see a fundamental 
difference between their position and Black Pixel's: they have provided, as 
have Syntevo, concrete information about where they are in the process of 
making that capability available to current and potential users of their 
tool. As you noted in an earlier post, there is some (significant, 
possibly) risk associated with taking such a public position. As a 
developer, I also recognize this risk. I'm guessing I'm not alone in that; 
most SVN client users are developers of some ilk and probably do, too. The 
difference here is that we simply have nothing concrete in terms of 
expectations from Black Pixel as to when it will be available, only that it 
will be at some point.

Please accept this in the spirit in which it is offered; it is not an 
attack, it is just my perspective. You've got a decent product that we 
thought good enough to be willing to spend money and purchase a license to 
use. For some of us, SVN is a tool we work with almost every day and as 
such it is a crucial part of our workflow. I'm in a position of trying to 
figure out at what point the friction being introduced by this particular 
tool in this context is significant enough that I need to look elsewhere. 
The absence of anything concrete as to when to expect SVN v1.7 support in 
Versions begins to make that decision easier and easier as more time 
passes. 

-- 
/ron

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