Firstly, this is not a question about repository synchronisation for which there are numerous questions already on Stack Overflow. The scenario I have is with an external vendor working in their own publicly facing SVN instance then an internal development team wanting to take a specific path and revision (such as a version for release), and promote it to the head of an internal only repository. There may also need to be changes made to the code internally before this happens (i.e. configuration settings).
This is not repository synchronisation; version history doesn’t matter. What does matter is that if changes or deletions occur in repository A that they can be reflected back into the head of repository B. It seems the most logical way for this to happen would be for the working directory of the internal developer connected to repository B to be able to sync it to the path and revision specified in the vendor’s repository A then commit the change set internally.
Does anyone know if this can be done either natively or by third party tools? I know this is a DVCS feature but we need to find a way to make it work with Subversion.
If I understand your use case correctly it sounds very much like the process described in the online Subversion book as a vendor branch.