New project or branch?

Question

I have a solution in Subversion that I now will create a customer specific version of. It's unlikely that this version ever fully will get merged back into the main development. There will however be development both in the main trunk that I easily need to get into the specific project and the other way around (development in the custom project that needs to go back into the main trunk).

Should the new custom project be a branch that lives in parallel with the main development or a new project within the the same repository in your opinion?

Answer 1

In theory this is a branch. So I would suggest to work with it as such.

Answer 2

I would definitely create a new branch. If the two variations of the project still share a lot of common code, and there's still even a remote likeliness they might be merged back together, I don't see any benefit in separating them into two totally independent projects.

I'd go with a branch - it gives you the options to later merge stuff back together, if needed.

Marc

Answer 3

If they are in the same repository, then it does not matter. You can still merge from the one project tree to the other.

Otherwise, my gut feel says "branch"

Answer 4

Since this is a modification to the main development, a branch would be best.

A branch will allow for merges in both directions using svn.

Creating a new project would require manual synchronization of changes.

Answer 5

I would say this is a branch. While you may not merge from the custom version to the head, its that likely code in the mainstream/head that you might want to migrate into your custom branch to upgrade the custom version. While this can be done in separate repositories its not as "visible" if its in a single place and when something falls off the radar it tends to lag behind and fall into disrepair.