RE: Feature Suggestion: Ability to specify dedicate path for .SVN folders.

Thanks for the feedback, Ryan et al, it is very much appreciated.

>"If you store each working copy's .svn data in Local Settings \Application Data, then presumably you have to link it with the actual location of the working copy somehow. If you do this by path, then it is not possible to move or rename a working copy; this is possible with the current implementation, so this would be a reduction in functionality."

I hadn't realised this was possible (nor had any plans to ever do it), but this is a good point (which would be one of the reasons why it would have to be an informed option rather than a fixed change - however, as pointed out, I had not yet discovered the Export function, which makes the whole point of my original suggestion somewhat redundant).

>"Get a better editor or command-line utility, or request that your editor or command-line utility be updated to deal with this problem."

I already spent a lot of time and some money doing this, and yes, I have requested a new feature (as all it needs is the ability to ignore hidden folders). Whether they do it or not is another question. Problem is, it is hard to find an editor that does everything you want, and this problem was unanticipated at the time.

>"I'm not familiar with command-line utilities on Windows, though; maybe they're more limited."

They sure are (sigh). Things have improved since VBScript was added to the OS, but it is a bit more labour intensive to get the same results.

>"You would not want to have the tags checked out into your working area, since you never work on tags. Tags, once created, are not supposed to change. That's not enforced by Subversion, of course (unless you write a pre-commit hook to do so) but it's a useful convention."

Sorry - this was a misprint.

>"I'm not sure why you think that specifically TortoiseSVN assumes that you have only a single working area that you switch from trunk to branches. From reading the Subversion Book, I get the impression that this is the suggested way to work regardless of what client you use."

The TortoiseSVN manual seems to say the same thing (I chose my words badly and made it sound like TortoiseSVN was only doing one and not the other if you want it to, however, that is the implication of the 'switch' command).

However, I can see that you could go either way, and certainly having "trunk" and "branches" in your working copy (as you suggest) saves switching and makes check outs a single click process, and having the working copy tree and repository tree identical would be conceptually simpler for the 'newbies' on the team.

The idea here was that for those who want to use 'switch', it would be handy if you could just checkout the root of the repository and only have 'trunk' come out for all projects as if the 'trunk' folder were absent from the working copy paths. If no-one has asked for this before, I would guess most people are using the 'one project per repository' approach or the 'have root and branch folders checked out and do not use switch' approach.

--
Thanks everyone for taking the time to give such thoughtful answers (particularly when the Export command issue turned out to be a RTFM question).
I'm a bit overwhelmed at the moment trying to set up as the new developer here, particularly having to switch over from SourceSafe (the network is too slow and it takes over an hour to open a project with VSS!) and pickup several new technologies in short order with my predecessor's release dates looming (and he wasn't that fussed about details like documentation and source code control, if you catch my drift), so I am finding it easy to overlook things in the rush.
I have had to test and evaluate a number of source control systems in the last week or so, before finally settling on Subversion/TortoiseSVN as the best for our needs (and it is very good - new things about how good it is just become more apparent the more I get into using it).  This weekend, I installed them at home for personal use (high praise indeed - I'm very fussy about my home machine and what goes on it), leaving SourceSafe aside for Microsoft Office projects only (with plans to drop it altogether when someone eventually produces a SCC proxy for Subversion that works with Microsoft Access).
Regards, and thanks again.
Paul.
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