Subversion JavaHL over JavaSVN

Subversion 1.4.0 hit Debian Unstable a day or 2 ago, so I happily upgraded my source repository server and development machine. Then I found that Subclipse using JavaSVN got sort of unhappy with my choice -- throwing "Malformed network data" errors.

The Debian release notes mentioned that svn will automatically upgrade an older working copy to use the new 1.4 formats, so I was being really careful to not touch my working copy with anything but JavaSVN for now. After chewing up my working copy badly enough with JavaSVN, I finally added -Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni to my eclipse.ini, and switch Subclipse to use the native JavaHL bindings which would use the official 1.4.0 Subversion libraries. That's working nicely now, and it's fast. I may stick with this configuration for a bit even when I see a newer JavaSVN/Subclipse come across the update site.

I had chosen JavaSVN previously to maintain "Java purity", and I also think the native JavaHL libraries may not have been available by default through Debian. I'm not sure. It's working now, though.