Sharing Files in SVN

Question

I am in the process of moving from VSS to SVN and I'm not sure how to share files in SVN.

Basically we have the following structure in VSS

$MOSS
  - Components
    - ComponentA
      - bin
    - ComponentB
      - bin
  - GAC Mirror

GAC Mirror holds a shared copy of all the Dlls from the bin folders of the components to allow for easy copying to the GAC.

In VSS all you do is drag the Dll from the bin folder to the GAC Mirror folder and it works it's life out.

How would I do this in SVN?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

We had the same problem. The simple answer is that you can't share files in SVN - in the end we had to restructure our directories and use batch files.

e.g. for source code files that were shared, we moved them to an Include folder, and have all the projects reference that folder.

For binary files that need to be copied to more than one location we store them just once in SVN, and then use batch files to copy them across to the target locations on each developers machine (or also on the build machine).

Answer 2

Is svn:externals what you're after? http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/ch07s03.html

Answer 3

I second Rick on this. To me, the whole concept of "sharing" (= having the same file occur in two places at checkouts) is weird.

I guess each versioning system has its own mindset implicitly attached to it. I've tried Perforce and I've stayed with Subversion. Bringing your projects to it without changing the mindset and maybe workflow may be flawed, though.

The Book on svn is a worthy read, to get some of the mindset submerged before doing the plunge. You can select some sections only, you don't have to read all at once.