Last week the Subversion team launched a minor version which addresses security and performance via 1.9.6. It was a great boost for the user base ‘s confidence in Subversion as they look into the future for continued commitment to build mission critical Enterprise projects on Subversion.

I say — It is paramount that the community continue to show momentum and increased innovation in the Subversion project — some of the largest enterprises in the world rely on it to version control their most valuable and critical data, so continued innovation in the technology ensures this data will remain cemented on Subversion for years to come.

That being said, the real excitement today is what the future holds for the Subversion project. Today, as part of the ongoing innovation happening in the Subversion community, one of its developers Julian Foad has just revealed what he has been working on for weeks — a plan to address one of the long standing issues plaguing Subversion users for over a decade. Doing work locally without the server.

Distributed Version control (DVCS) technologies have enabled developers to take advantage of rapid workflows with their ability to locally branch and locally stash work in-progress without ever having to talk to a server. This has been widely accepted as a great productivity and multitasking boon.

Now Subversion will get its own productivity and modern workflow with the design proposal for “Shelving and Checkpointing” as revealed by Julian here with a detailed design in google doc format in the footer of that email.

“Subversion is the system of choice for millions, and these developments will bring Subversion users the speed advantages of local operations that git has popularized.” — Julian Foad (SVN Committer, Assembla SVN Engineer)

This new design will likely prompt a 1.11 release which will follow after 1.10 (which is in BETA). Overall I am very excited for Subversion users and we at Assembla are excited to be helping move the needle by taking Subversion and going Next-Gen. Enterprises around the world will be able to take advantage of non-linear increases in productivity across their developer base when this release goes public.

“Assembla’s vision for a Cloud connected Subversion platform is inspiring. I am delighted to be working with Assembla and the open-source community to deliver these long-awaited features.” — Julian Foad

Moreover, this sets up Subversion to continue to innovate long past version 1.11 across other strategic areas.

I truly hope this inspires new users and developers to enter the Subversion community who are interested in driving innovation forward and ultimately increasing the size of the “maintainer list”.

“Working with Assembla on the next generation of Subversion is creating renewed excitement in the Subversion project.” — Julian Foad

The community needs talented and motivated people that want to make Subversion better and better. To join up just jump onto the mailing lists and get started!