Subversion version 'difference' a big deal?

Question

Greetings, using VS2008 and VisualSVN and seems the VisualSVN folks are religious about updating the client (and their VisualSVN server) to the latest Subversion release.

My question is my subversion server is a hosted server and seems to always lag several versions behind the client I use. Should I be concerned about this version "mis-match"?

Is there a general rule of thumb about when it is a point to be concerned (like an entire major release behind)?

Any sort of mechanism build into either the client, the server or the protocol that prevents something horrible from happening between badly 'paired' clients and servers?

Answer 1

The client and server do not need to match completely. You only need to worry about being incompatible for the major releases. e.g. changing from 2.x.x to 3.x.x

Answer 2

Generally speaking you don't need to be concerned with client/server version mismatches. The protocol is maintained consistently to prevent issues with version mismatches. Some new features may not be available unless both client/server are updated, but that's not surprising.

You do need to be concerned about using different clients against the same working copy, like TortoiseSVN vs command line SVN. SVN will automatically upgrade a working copy when it needs one and if a different client is using an older version it may no longer have access.

Here's a link to more detailed information strait from the source (Thanks to Dave!)

Release numbering, compatibility, and deprecation

http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/releasing.html#release-numbering

Answer 3

It's ok if your client is ahead of your host. The client should know how to deal with older versions of svn (I've mainly used TortoiseSVN for the past 5 years or so). It's when your host is newer than your client that you can run into problems, but CollabNet is very good about announcing releases that change the repository format (and it doesn't happen very often).