SVN externals and export for framework

Question

I'm currently working on a framework for a client. The framework is based upon Zend Framework. The directory structure is:

application                   : Application specific code
application/modules/frontend  : Application specific code
application/modules/backend   : Backend for MyFramework
library/MyFramework           : The custom framework
library/Zend                  : The Zend framework
public                        : Images, CSS, JavaScript
test                          : Tests (also includes tests for MyFramework)

I need to find a way to manage this project with Subversion. We want MyFramework and Zend to load from externals, because the client doesn't need to update this code. The application and public folder should be loaded from Subversion too, but can be changed by the client.

When the client starts working on a new application they should do an export of the complete folder structure:

svn export svn://complete_framework

The export is needed because they will put the code in their own Subversion for version management. When doing the export, the externals to Zend and MyFramework are lost, so they need to be added.

Does Subversion offer any solution for this or should we just write a shell script which does the export and sets the externals again?

Answer 1

A distribuited system would be much better in your test case. Anyway, does svn export --ignore-externals ... help to solve the issue? I don't have a couple of repositories to try it by myself.

Answer 2

Look if thing called Vendor Branches fit your scenario.