SVN custom folder structure

[Tim Davis]

We're evaluating FishEye, to be used with our SVN (VisualSVN) repositories. Hence, we're looking at the built-in symbolic rules vs custom.

Existing SVN organisation is a bit ugly with projects and trunks scattered at different levels in repository, e.g.

projects/trunk/subproject/subproject/...
projects/subproject/subsubproject/trunk/...

Am I right in that this is really not recommended?

We do plan to migrate all code to a new SVN server so, should we aim to strictly standardise on the /project/trunk/... approach?

[Norman Abramovitz · Accepted solution]

If you have a single repository with mixed structure then you might need to create pseudo repositories in Fisheye to deal with the differences.

Your structure seems to represent the change in thought on how to organize svn repositories. Initially it was recommended that trunk/branches/tags was at the highest level of the repository. Later it was recommended that each project have their own trunk/branches/tags to make moving projects easier and being able to provide access to svn projects in an easier fashion.

[Tim Davis]

The structure has evolved over a long period of time, and it's been a bit of a free for all. We are now going to implement a standard, which will help FishEye

[Norman Abramovitz]

I am sure there are other items, but the one pitfall I ran into was svn properties when reorganizing repositories. In particular svn:externals, where I needed to fix up the references.

For the projects that are dead, we just moved them to a separate area (we called it archive) with still active libraries getting a branch for archived project.

[Tim Davis]

Questions answered. Thankyou

[rverschoor]

As long as there is structure in each repository, you can define it in FishEye and have it indexed.
If the structure differs from repository to repository, you'll have to configure the tag and branch structure regexps in FishEye correctly, which can be a lot of work.

If you have the opportunity to correct the structure of your SVN repos, that might be best.
See http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch04s07.html#svn-ch-4-sect-7.1 for the commonly used structures. You don't have to stick to those, you can use your own variation, as long as you use it consistently.

[Tim Davis]

Thankyou for responding to this. We will take the opportunity to 'orgnise SVN properly' next time. Thanks