Release Repositories

This is not a Subversion question per se. However, as CMs, I hope you
guys can help me with what is a CM question.

We have a rather interesting setup here at my job. We do some script
development, and I'm trying to convince our team to use Subversion for
development work. We currently "use" ClearCase although "use" is a
misnomer. We officially have ClearCase, but it's not available on our
Unix development box. About six months ago, someone checked in lot of
our scripts into ClearCase, and they haven't been touched since.
People are simply making changes to the development scripts without
any sort of version control system. Anyway, I am pushing our team to
use Subversion, and it'll take a while. Big lumbering beasts don't
change directions very quickly.

The real issue are vendor patches. We receive patches from a vendor.
They're currently stored on a Windows shared drive. When they come in,
we get an email from the vendor. We then manually manipulate the
patch, then manually FTP it up to a server. We then FTP these patches
to a Unix box, run a program that runs a Perl script that fires off
several Ant scripts that remunges these files into their final format,
and adds in the information into our CM database, so we can track
these patches. Oh, by the way, we also have to manually update our
ClearQuest database with this information.

I've written a script that can take a Vendor patch, reformat it into
the final format we need, move it to the server where we want it, and
update our CM and ClearQuest databases at the same time -- a
completely automated process.

What I'd like to do is have a way that when the Vendor puts a patch
onto some "server", I can trigger my script to process this patch
automatically. Subversion's post-commit hook would be a great way to
do this. However, Subversion really isn't the tool I need. If we use
Subversion, I have to train the vendor in Subversion, and provide them
some sort of Subversion client. We also really don't need the version
control aspects of Subversion. Patches won't really be changed, and we
want to be able to delete obsolete patches in order to free up space
on our repository. Subversion, unfortunately, makes that last task
very difficult.

I've used Nexus and Artifactory as pure release repositories at other
sites that have nothing to do with Maven or even Java and Ant. They're
easy to integrate with build tools like Hudson and provide a web
interface for people to find the software they want and download it.
Unfortunately, I don't know if either of these have the same hook
mechanism that Subversion has. What I really need is something that is
as simple for non-developers to use as Nexus or Artifactory for
downloading these patches, but with the power of Subversion's hooks.
That way, whenever the vendor downloads a new patch, I can have my
script instantly swoop down and process it.

Any ideas of any software that can handle this.

Again, sorry about bothering the list about what probably is a
non-Subversion question. (Then again, Subversion might be exactly what
I need if we can overcome some of the other issues I mentioned).
However, I know many of you have had similar circumstances and I hope
you can shed some light on this issue.

-- 
David Weintraub
qazwart_at_gmail.com