Yesterday I tried to set up Subversion on a Debian box I’ve got. It was awful. I mean, it took me minutes. What decent server software install can take only minutes?
What happened to the good old days, where one had to compile stuff, find out the Makefile wasn’t compatible with the platform, work out how to build the stuff by resorting to the source code, spend hours on it, and then find that a handful of dependencies were needed, and then repeat the process trying to build them? What happened to the “using Unix takes balls” crowd? Have they all got PowerBooks and turtleneck shirts, and complain about girly things like usability? 
Installing Subversion was not much more than just a matter of
apt-get install subversion subversion-tools
And a few bits of chmod and chgrp, and it was working nicely, with SSH authentication and all the bells and whistles. Very, very nice.
Oh, and that probably wouldn’t be possible without Mike Mason’s great Pragmatic Version Control using Subversion, a copy of which was lying around the office desks somewhere. I grabbed it, looked at the index, found the “Installation” chapter, and a glance at it gave me enough info to get by and have the thing working (see, a few bits of chmod and chgrp can always go a long way). Joy.
Liz | 04-Mar-05 at 2:11 pm | Permalink
I _so_ need your help setting up subversion and SSH so that I can do JBehave stuff. Any chance you might be able to give me a hand some lunch time next week, and maybe explain to me how the whole SSH thing works? I’ll buy you a pint if you do…
Carlos Villela | 04-Mar-05 at 3:19 pm | Permalink
Sure, Liz! I’ve set up svn+ssh with the Eclipse plugins (which I believe is what you want to use) a while ago when I was having a look at the JBehave source code. Should be fairly straight forward, in fact: try installing the Subclipse Plugin and the JavaSVN Plugin (use Help/Software Updates and add the URLs, it should pick up the plugins you need to install), give it a go and tell me how it works out.