Advantages of Native Repository Access over lightSCM plugins

Prior to Crucible 2.4, running Crucible without FishEye required the use of "lightSCM" plugins (like the Crucible Subversion SCM plugin). From version 2.4, Crucible provides native repository access which supersedes Crucible's bundled lightSCM plugins. Third-party lightSCM plugins are unaffected and will continue to work with Crucible. The bundled plugins will still be available, so your existing configurations will also continue to work unchanged.

If you are currently using any of the bundled lightSCM plugins, we recommend that you migrate to using native repository access for the following reasons:

• Atlassian's lightSCM plugins (not lightSCM itself) are being deprecated, i.e. we will not update any of the bundled lightSCM plugins after the 2.4 release.
• It is easier for us to support and maintain a single implementation of our SCM interfaces, rather than support the standard FishEye access and the lightSCM implementations.
• Native repository access provides full support for SCMs for which there are no current lightSCM plugin implementations, including CVS and Mercurial.
• Native repository access provides additional functionality that is not available in the lightSCM plugins including:
  • Viewable commits in the activity streams (e.g. the dashboard activity stream).
  • Repositories administration via the administration console.
  • Easier review creation due to the ability to search and browse the repository using the full power of FishEye. For example, browsing for a file to add to a new review (see Adding content to the review).
• Improved performance of native repository access over the lightSCM plugins. The lightSCM plugins retrieve data on demand from the underlying repository, rather than using caches and indexes like FishEye and native repository access. Hence, Crucible with native repository access, whilst requiring an initial indexing phase, will be faster than Crucible with lightSCM plugins during day-to-day operations.
• Native repository access allows for migration to a full FishEye license in future, if desired. Your repositories can simply be re-indexed for full FishEye functionality and existing reviews will then be available on the full repository.

To change over from lightSCM plugins to native repository access:

1. Disable your lightSCM plugins via the Crucible Administration Console ('Plugins' link under the 'Systems Settings' section in the left menu).
   Do not disable the SCM plugins for connecting to a Confluence instance or a file system. Native repository access does not include functionality to connect these (nor does FishEye alone), hence you will still need to use plugins.
2. Add native repositories for any repositories that are currently connected via lightSCM plugins. See the FishEye documentation.
3. If you are using Subversion or Perforce, we recommend that you set a "start" revision for the changeover, unless you need to review old code. This will eliminate the need for native repository support to index old repository activity, getting you up and running quickly.