Symptoms

Subversion checkouts started to take too long after upgrading Bamboo instance to 5.6.x or later. Checkout with Source Code Checkout task takes about 5 times longer than in previous versions of Bamboo.

Cause

Due to upgrade of svnkit library Bamboo uses by default SVN workspace format 1.8. Since workspace format 1.7 - SQLite is used internally by SVN to store workspace data.

SVNKit library used in Bamboo has it's own implementation for SQLite called SQLJet. It works ok with small repositories but has huge performance issues with big ones.

Some additional information

• SVN workspace format 1.6 is much faster than both 1.7 and 1.8.

• SVN workspace format 1.7 is faster than 1.8. 

• There is an issue for SVNKit that can be monitored here: http://issues.tmatesoft.com/issue/SVNKIT-553. Bamboo will switch to fixed version when it's ready.
• Issue for Bamboo was originally raised here: BAM-15208 - SVN checkout slow after upgrading from 5.1.0 to 5.6.2
  
  

Resolution

Problem occurs in external library and we monitor issue waiting for proper fix.

We recommend to enforce using old SVN workspace format 1.6 in Bamboo as a workaround until problem is fixed.

To change default SVN workspace format please follow instructions in How to configure Bamboo to support Subversion 1.7 Working copy format (just use 1.6 instead of 1.7).