Managing Vendor Branches

I've recently needed to track changes for vendor code drops, so I read
the SVN book's vendor branches chapter. But I'm not entirely happy
with part of the procedure, so I'd like to talk it out and, I hope,
find a better way.

The part I hope to improve is when I have a versioned code drop in the
/vendor directory, then the vendor provides a new code drop. The SVN
book suggests that I should copy the new files over top of the files
in my working copy. Then I need to SVN add and delete as needed. I saw
there's a script to ease this process, but I still feel that this
should be easier.

It seems to me that comparing two trees, even unrelated trees, is
something SVN is very good at. So if I have /vendor/code-drop-v1 and
/vendor/code-drop-v2, then it seems SVN should be able to derive the
changes between the two and apply those changes to my working copy.

Can I do this?
Received on 2010-02-27 08:26:30 CET