Re: [boost] Boost Development Environment proposal

From: Michael Marcin (mmarcin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-06-04 17:56:36

troy d. straszheim wrote:
>
> My workspace (CVS HEAD) contains some svn:externals that look like
> this:
>
>  iostreams  https://svn.boost.org/svn/projects/iostreams/trunk
>  variant    https://svn.boost.org/svn/projects/variant/trunk
>  date_time  https://svn.boost.org/svn/projects/date_time/trunk
>  (etc)
>
> which means the code layout looks like that above.  When I svn update,
> each of those subdirectories are updated recursively.  I can make one
> commit across multiple projects.
>

We use 1 svn:external per project that points to an shared directory in my 
companies repository.
I find it a constant source of trouble.  People forget that they must branch 
the external separately and make erroneous checkins.  When they branch the 
external it generally is branched with a different name than the other 
branch as it must account for the name of the projec that is branching it. 
Our server address is different for remote access and on site access.  The 
external must be updated locally to point to the external address and if it 
gets checked in accidently it breaks things.  It may just be my client 
(TortoiseSVN) but if I show log on the folder with the external its contents 
are considered changes to an unrelated path and hidden when that option is 
enabled.

Perhaps others have had better experiences.  When I read the svn book and 
found out about externals I reorginized are whole companies repository to 
make heavy use of them.  Soon we realized the maintenence headache they 
bring and we changed it again.  Now if I could just get rid of that last svn 
external my life would be much easier.

As an aside if it doesn't exist yet an empty directory should be added in a 
readily accessible location that can be svn switched into.  It helps useable 
a lot at our company.

Thanks,

Michael Marcin