VisualSVN 3.5 Release Notes

We are delighted to announce VisualSVN 3.5, the newest version of the professional Subversion integration plug-in for Visual Studio. This release provides an upgrade to the Apache Subversion 1.8 that brings a lot of significant improvements, including symmetric merges and repository dictated configuration.

Subversion 1.8: automatic merges, inherited properties and serf

Apache Subversion 1.8 is a major release that brings more than 180 user-visible changes both on the client and server side. The most important new features of this release are the following:

  • Automatic reintegration merge. Merging to-and-fro between two branches in any order is now possible using the new "automatic merge" feature. Manual reintegrate merges are not required anymore and the '--reintegrate' option of 'svn merge' is now deprecated.
  • Inherited properties. Property inheritance provides a mechanism to find the versioned properties set on the path-wise parents of a given path. New properties 'svn:auto-props' and 'svn:global-ignores' make use of the property inheritance and help to implement repository dictated configuration for automatic property setting and ignore patterns.
  • Neon library support removed in favour of the serf. The serf is an asynchronous HTTP client library that provides significantly better network performance than the neon library.
  • Rename is now a first class operation in the working copy. The effect of the rename operation is now different from copying followed by deletion. Some of the possible conflicts are now resolved automatically when you have renamed items and update your working copy or switch it to another branch.

For the complete list of notable improvements please consider the Apache Subversion 1.8 Release Notes.

Upgrade and compatibility concerns

While upgrading to VisualSVN 3.5, you will be requested to upgrade your working copies to the newer format. It's recommended to upgrade using the VisualSVN | Upgrade Working Copy main menu command. Note that this operation cannot be easily undone and older Subversion clients will be unable to work with the upgraded working copy.

VisualSVN 3.5 will be able to work with older Subversion servers, but optimal performance will be achieved with Subversion 1.8 (or greater) servers only. So please upgrade your Subversion server in order to fully benefit from the new features such as inheritable properties.

Free upgrade from VisualSVN 3.0

Upgrade to VisualSVN 3.5 is free for all registered VisualSVN 3.0 users. This range includes customers who have purchased VisualSVN license starting from September 16th, 2011.

Other customers are required to purchase an upgrade. To place your order, please complete our online purchase form.

You can download the latest VisualSVN 3.5 build at the official download page.