Is svnserve ready to replace Apache as the Subversion Server of Choice?

For some time Clearvision have been advising client to use Apache as their Subversion server in preference to svnserve. Traditionally svnserve did not offer full data encryption, password files were plain text files and there was no logging of activity so you could not check who was breaking into your system, there was no option but to recommend Apache. This was a shame because svnserve is fast... very fast. Svnserve is purpose built and uses a custom protocol for network communciation but Apache uses the http protocols WebDav/DelatV extension and WebDav/DelatV which was not designed for the multi-file transactions that are Subversions bread and butter. With industrial strength encryption for svnserve introduced in SVN 1.5 through SASL and server logging in SVN 1.6 Clearvision is finally able to recommend svnserve as a viable alternative for commercial organisations. SVN 1.5 svnserve came built with SASL and can now do more or less anything that Apache can do regards encryption and integration with Authentication/Authorisation systems e.g. You can now send fully encrypted data and logins accross the network based on LDAP authentication and Subversion authorisation. SVN 1.6 is available and svnserve now has logging, this is really good news! Not only can you now lock the Subversion house with svnserve but we can put the svnserve logging system in as a watchman. The jury is still out on the quality of the svnverve logging - it needs air time, and as of yet it is not fully documented, but watch this space, once this feature has proved itself svnserve will have made significant steps forward. So, if the logging is as good as we hope it will be is Apache dead and gone? Should all customers convert to svnserve? The answer is "No, not all of you...". If you want to utilise proxy-write through slaves to create writeable slaves around the globe you may still need to use Apache (you may find direct svnserve access is faster). If you use Apaches WebDav capability to publish the latest versions of code directly 1.6 now allows you to now to also view old versions of code without a client so you may also wish to keep an Apache based server parallel to svnserve to enable clientless read-only access. In short once the new logging feature of svnserve has proven itself, you may want to consider using it for speed alone.