Best web front-end for SVN?

Question

I'm researching SVN repository browsers, and it's a tiresome task given how many are out there (I started here)

The "ideal" system would

• Run on linux
• Be easy to use, even for non-developer types
• Look nice (have a decent skin)
• Either have built-in access control, or be written in PHP so that I could hack it myself to hook it up to something like an LDAP server.

Basically, I'm researching the idea of using a SVN front-end as also a delivery system for assets to other employees (think account executives, project managers, etc) who need read-only access and are not as technically minded so it needs to be easy to use/navigate. And I'd really need to be able to set read permissions on a per-folder basis - we can't have everyone with full read access to the entire repository.

Answer 1

Trac.( http://trac.edgewall.org/ ) Its not wonderful, but from what I've seen, for SVN its the best.

With Access control to boot.

I managed to set up a rig with even per-directory permissions for various trac users ( they just didn't appear ) .

Been a while tho.

Default Skin looks pretty good, and is highly tunable.

Comes with a wiki & bug tracker, which you can disable if you want.

Answer 2

For the most beautiful web-based SVN client, I tend to think of Warehouse:

http://www.warehouseapp.com/

It's really, really nice on the eyes, and has great functionality to boot. It has built-in access control, but no ability to tie into external access control yet (apparently it's on their radar, according to their forums).

Answer 3

The trunk development version (set to become version 1.1) of ViewVC supports access control. ViewVC is featureful as a repository viewer, and intuitive to use, without any unnecessary extras.

Answer 4

redmine is what we're using at work. It's similar to trac, but offers multiple project capability. The browser's decent, allowing role based permissions on each project, and each project is based on a subtree of the repository.

Also lets you browse other repository types, has a file store for publishing files and a wiki - all of which can be disabled or enabled on a per-project basis.

Answer 5

sventon looks very interesting. It is a servlet/jsp solution written on top of the svnkit Java library. It can act as a true client, so it does not need direct access the repository (like ViewVC for example). It can use the access control of the repository itself.

Answer 6

Atlassian Fisheye http://www.atlassian.com/software/fisheye/ is a commercial one that I can't live without!

(full disclosure...I am employed by Atlassian, but I say without bias that Fisheye is the best one out there that I've used)

Answer 7

We used ViewVC for browsing both CVS and SVN repositories but since we switched to FishEye we finally have a really good solution for code browsing and examination.

We also use other Atlassian products (Jira and Confluence) and integration between all of them is just marvelous!

PS. I'm not an Atlassian employee :)

Answer 8

http://beanstalkapp.com/ will host your repository and make it navigable at the same time.

Answer 9

I'm not employed by Atlassian and fisheye is great. I think adding in crucible makes it a real win. (in the past I have used websvn and found that to be ok). I don't really like the viewVC interface. There's somthing about it that makes it harder for me to groc the changes, I don't know what.

Answer 10

You should have a look at http://www.groowiki.com

We plan to have the access control features you miss, it is on the roadmap. We also target search, workflow support and right now you can add description to the file and directories using radeox and write plugins in Java or Groovy.

And yes, I am affiliated with Groowiki. I wrote it and plabn to develop it further. And it is free AND commercial as well. Only a very few features are close (not open) source so bug companies needing those specific features support its development.

Answer 11

WebSVN? It's written in PHP, lightweight, and simple. Check out the demo.