Recurring problem with the SVN structure for WC

Greetings everyone,

        There's a recurrent problem when trying to put Subversion into use by an heterogeneous team containing developers, project
managers and so on. This problem is the fragility of the Subversion control files, namely ".svn" folders and contents.

        It's kind of difficult to enforce the idea of not copying folders out of a Subversion-safe environment due to the mess that
the hidden folders create.

        I confess that I ignore the reason why CVS and SVN insist in keeping control files for each folder inside the respective
folder. I suspect that it has something to do with having multiple small files instead of one huge file, or maybe speeding up the
search for the file's version properties.

        If that's so, I suggest a structure like this:

ProjectRoot
..|
..+- .svntree/
..|....+- .svn/ (for ProjectRoot)
..|....|....+- svndir1/ (I.e. prop-base for ProjectRoot)
..|....|....+- svndir2/ (I.e. props for ProjectRoot)
..|....|....+- .../
..|....|....+- entries (for ProjectRoot)
..|....|....+- ...
..|....|
..|....+- ProjectDir1
..|....|....+- .svn/ (for ProjectDir1)
..|....|....|....+- svndir1/ (I.e. prop-base for ProjectDir1)
..|....|....|....+- svndir2/ (I.e. props for ProjectDir1)
..|....|....|....+- .../
..|....|....|....+- entries (for ProjectDir1)
..|....|....|....+- ...
..|....|....|
..|....|....+- .../
..|....|
..|....+- ...
..|
..+- ProjectDir1
..|....+- .../
..|....+- ...
..|
..+- .../
..+- ...

        In other words, separate the tree of SVN control files from the real files and put it in the project root.

        The advantage of that is that copying folders around won't mess the versioning information. Except, of course, copying the
project root to another project. But in that case, the Subversion client could ignore ".svntree" in a subfolder which the parent
already had an ".svntree".

        In such situations, copying from one place to another would have the expected result, which is, having unversioned folders
and files in the destination. And that would happen no matter which interface the user would have used.

        The Subversion client would only need to navigate through two parallel trees instead of a single one. I believe that it
would have little if any impact on performance or resources.

Thank you for your attention,

Felipe Carasso
Developer
Latin America Card Development Group - SIM Applications client/server Gemalto
Tel: + 1-514-732-2342
Fax: + 1-514-732-2301
3 Place du Commerce, bureau 300
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3E 1H7
felipe.carasso@gemalto.com
www.gemalto.com