Question

I’m a beginner in svn. I know basic things like creating a repository, checking, updating, creating branches and such, but I have some difficulty in defining a structure for my repository when working with various cms.

Let’s suppose I’m creating a lot of components and templates for a cms, like Joomla!. These components are going to be used in a lot of different portals, may be related or not to each other and the templates may be adapted to other projects as well on the run.

What’s the best approach – create a single repository, called ‘Joomla Projects’, and all components inside it (since some modules are really simple, 4 php files inside a folder), or a repository for each component?

I dont know if I’m making myself clear, it’s my first time here. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can decide yourself after reading the topic ‘Planning Your Repository Organization’ in the SVN Book.

It really depends on your needs. Since you said there’ll be a lot of small components shared by many projects (i.e. they are tightly related) I think you’d better have a single repository with separate branches/tags/trunk folders:

components/   component_1/     trunk/     tags/     branches/   component_2/     trunk/     tags/     branches/   ... project_1/   trunk/   tags/   branches/ project_2/   trunk/   tags/   branches/ ... 

That leaves open the possibility for each component to have different branches for different projects (if required).

SVN externals may also be useful in your case.