This weekend’s update marks the first of many major improvements planned for Code Spaces since being adopted by AbleBots. We have big plans in store for Code Spaces, and I’d like to take a moment to tell you what we got started with.
Subversion 1.7
Code Spaces now has full support for SVN 1.7, allowing you to take advantages of it’s new features. A request we frequently get from CS users is the ability to export your SVN repository on demand. In addition to the realtime backups CS currently offers, 1.7 users can take advantage of the new SVNRDUMP utility, which allows you to export your repo without requiring access to the remote server. Additionally, SVN PATCH was introduced to working along side of SVN DIFF for creating and applying patches.
As far as what 1.7 provides for Code Spaces, two words: “increased performance.” With this release, the CS architecture was rebuilt from the ground up to push the performance to its limits: the new 1.7 protocol has been streamlined which means less overhead and quicker throughput for faster response times. On top of this our new architecture includes performance gains for repo authentication and fine grained permissions, access to commits, log requests, you name it. Our new architecture provides a very extensible foundation that will enable us to realize some of our more ambitious plans for Code Spaces like IP White/Blacklisting, and many more widely requested features. Keep an eye for these new features in the upcoming months.
SVN 1.7 also makes it easier for users who manage more than one Code Spaces account. Because of the way the SVN clients stored credentials, accessing multiple accounts was a bit of a pain point. SVN 1.7 introduces a slightly different URL scheme for repositories:
https://ACCOUNT_NAME.codespaces.com/svn/REPOSITORY_NAME
This allows your SVN client to properly identify different accounts, ensuring that it always uses the proper authentication.
Work Items
Work items will receive a great detail of attention this year — over this past year, we’ve received all types of great feedback from our customers on ways to make work items even more powerful for their teams. We started with two big requests:
- Assigning owner’s of work items: Previously, if you created a work item, you became the owner. This works the majority of the time, but often you’ll want to create a work item on behalf of someone else. For instance, a project manager assigning a bug item to a developer on behalf of a quality control member. In short, now you can — work items now let you define who is the owner of the work items.
- Upload attachments from work items: While the ability to link previously uploaded documents to work items has always been available, the ability to upload attachments right from the work item was often ask for. We’ve accommodated this request by including an “Upload Attachment” button to the bottom of the new work item form, as well as creating an “Attachment” tab on existing work items, from where you can upload new attachments or link an existing document. Work item attachments go in to a special “Work Item Attachments” folder found in your documents, which contain subfolders whose name matches the Work Item they attachments belong to.
Wiki Updates
The Wiki got some much needed attention as well..
- Better default page: in short, users tend to be a little confused about how to get started using the wiki for the first time. We provide a quick explanation as the default for every new page, as a means to get you up and running quickly.
- WYSIWYG: We have included a WYSIWYG editor for the wiki to help you create more powerful pages.
- Better default style: You’ll notice the CSS of the wiki has been cleaned up as well. We incorporated a better defined default CSS template that should help to make your content look more mature.
- Customizable CSS: To take the Wiki CSS a step further, you can now edit the stylesheet used by your wiki. Simply click the “Customize CSS” button found in the Wiki toolbar, and you can make real-time updates to the way your Wiki looks.
Honorable Mentions
- Layout theming: We’ve added a more prominent header to the app, including the name of the current project for easy referencing.
- Added invoices to the Payments page.
- Fixed bug where new git repositories were being created twice.
Great work guys!
I like the invoice feature. We need more Git love.
Git will be getting some much needed attention in the coming months, I assure you
I know it will, it sounds like this year will be a good year for you guys. I really like the service so im excited.
Where is the best place to submit feature requests?
Also, is there any easy way to convert an SVN repo to a GIT repo? I know there are tools out there but it would be great if CodeSpaces could do it for you.
Thank you guys for the awesome updates! I love CodeSpaces; I can’t imagine not having it to help my team manage our projects. Its truly an invaluable tool, and gets better all the time.
The only thing I find myself wanting is a way to theme the interface (different color choices mainly). Sounds trivial, but it would be nice to make the interface a little more personal.
Keep up the good work!
Looks great! My next top issue is the ability to export the task estimates to Excel. Currently there is no way to total up the estimates for a project and export to Excel would help.
Any idea how we can upgrade an existing SVN repository to 1.7? I’ve had a look through the admin console and can’t see an option..
Cheers
We have existing repositories that point to the old scheme : https://svn.codespaces.com/ACCOUNT_NAME/REPOSITORY_NAME.
However, with the new update our admin site is now under the new scheme detailed in your blog post. Also, when we check our Subversion Repositories they are under the old scheme and we are unable to change them.
Now, whenever we try to connect to these repositories, we get the following error:
Unable to connect to a repository at URL … Access to ‘https://svn.codespaces.com/name/project’ forbidden.
We also tried to use the new scheme and that seems to give us the same error.
Can you please give us some guidance on how to correct this?
Frank,
I own a website and can get around the hosting and html//css but using svn is a new beast to me. I’ve managed to tie in one developer to it but I need to change files etc myself. SO, in essence two questions
1. Can I check out a file into dreamweaver to make alterations and then check back in
2. Do you have a thorough manual on how your system works so I can read through it and get up to speed. I want to use codespace but only can with a detailed guide on how it works.
Regards
A
My free trial ran out (without warning) and my project is paused for the last 2 days. My project team (whom I am paying) is unable to work. I tried to pay but both PayPal and credit card fails. Your payment system is broken, asking for $0 for all subscription levels. I tried to contact you but first got an error message and now see no form to contact you. Please unpause my project (inqle) and tell me how to pay!
Is there a bug tracking service? I love the code spaces service, definitely the best out there… but there are some bugs need reporting and fixing to really harden up the delivery.
For example, progress for milstones and workitems is not showing in the dashboard or Gantt. Some of the themes fail in the client portal… that sort of thing…
Keep up the good work, but reporting a bug would be great…