We have upgraded Subversion, our most popular tool.  Until now, we relied on the worthy Trac code browser to show files and changesets, but our new integrated code browser has improved integration and new features.

How to get it

The new code browser is available for all Subversion repositories.  If you are already using Subversion with our Trac/SVN tool, you can see the new code browser by navigating to the Trac/SVN tab and selecting the small link under “Browse Source”.  We recommend that you switch to the new code browser if you use Assembla tickets, or if you are not using Trac.  To switch your links to the new code browser, go to the Trac/SVN tab, and select “Use integrated code browser”, and submit with "Update Subversion Settings".

If you are making a new workspace, you can select the packages for Subversion with Assembla Tickets or Just Subversion.

If you are logged in to Assembla.com, you can find all of your repositories at http://code.assembla.com . If you are not logged in, you will bounce to the home page.

New Features

Single sign-on.  You won't have to go through the trac login to see your changesets.

Unified design.  You'll stay oriented with Assembla headers, footers, and styles.  This will be true even if you run it locally on your own repository.  The changeset view is redesigned to match our new stream view, so you can easily recognize commit events wherever you see them.

Links to Assembla tickets, wherever it sees #<ticket#> in commit comments.  You can also configure it to link to Trac or other ticketing systems.

Assembla profiles are linked to usernames.

File rendering improvements.  For example, a “readme” file will be rendered under the list of files in its directory.

View as Web page.  This feature totally changed the way we work with our designers.  In the old Trac browser, they committed HTML mockups, and we would see the code like this.   In the new browser, we show a “View as Web Page” button on the top right.  When you select this button, the browser will render your HTML with all of the relative .css, image, and .js links.  For example, you can get a look at our mockups for the new space/Stream and user/Stream page using the "View as Web Page" button.

The default "Download" button will give you the individual file (if you are looking at a file), or a zipped directory (if you are looking at a directory).

Repository copy.  Select “copy” in the footer or on the Instructions page, and you get a new space with a complete copy of the repository.  You can build templates for open source frameworks or commercial SDK's, then click and customize.  Now you can use our free public spaces to publish code templates for svn users, in the same way that git users post code on github, and Mercurial users post on bitbucket.org.  We will even put your public templates in our catalog.  Private templates can be useful for firms like Assembla Consulting that start new projects with a standard configuration.

We are discussing enhancements like code commenting, git support, and in-place editing.  If you want to suggest an improvement or vote on these ideas, please head over to feedback.assembla.com .  Please go to forum.assembla.com to report bugs and problems.  It's been fun working on this tool, and I thank everyone who reminded us how important SVN is to our user community.