Advice for use of Subversion

We have an existing production system that uses CVS as its CM store. There is ongoing maintenance against a branch (the most recent major release).

We have another project which is about to come on line. One of its major activities is to convert about 1/4 the code base to use an upgraded framework. In order to do the upgrade, the easiest path is to break a single monolithic code tree into a number of smaller subsections. This must at least be done at build time to comply with the new FW. But it would be better still to alter the layout of the source code also, along the same lines as the deployment.

In CVS, of course, this could not be done without abandoning the original repository, and along with it the ability to merge the maintenance code changes with the new development.

We are considering using Subversion instead because it appears that this should be possible.

Some questions:

1) First, will Subversion allow us to merge code changes from a branch to code changes on HEAD, even when the code is completely reorganized in HEAD
2) If so, is there anything we need to pay particular attention to when reorganizing to ensure this works? It seems like we would not be able to simply move a file and commit -- we must need to tell Subversion that the new file used to be the old file.
3) Assuming that #2 requires careful submission of commands to Subversion while moving files -- does Eclipse/Subclipse, IntelliJ 5.x, or some other tool do a better job of managing this?
4) Is there a way to convert a CVS repository, history and all, into a Subversion repository. Does anyone have experience in particular doing this for a SourceForge Enterprise Edition CVS/SVN installation (SFEE has some internal data to link CM commits to objects within SFEE)

Thanks,
Ken Clark
Principal Consultant, Tourtellotte Consulting
860.732.0206

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Received on Thu Apr 20 22:03:07 2006