Handling Subversion external links inside other external links

Question

We would like to use the subversion external link ability, but have hit a wall on getting external links to work in the way that we need them given that we probably have an abnormal arrangement of source.

The use case is such, we have an external library 1 and library 2. Library 1 can be built by itself (C++ libraries), without Library 2. Library 2 however has to be built inside Library 1's source tree. If you check-out the code we have a tree like such:

~/my_checkout/trunk/extern/library1/library2

Now, above, library1 is an external link to a source tree. The directory library2 we would like to be an external link to another source tree.

We have projects that don't need library2 (as library 2 is quite large) so we can't create an external link inside library 1's source tree. Also projects using library 1 are long in production so they are not willing to change there checkout procedures to accommodate any checkout differences (unfortunately).

Is there a way around this?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Ok so this was not a clever question. We found that you can actually set two externals on the same base root directory, just with a different local paths.

So in Tortoise SVN, you can add two externals with different but nested paths on the same root directory. I haven't done this with the command line but it should be possible as well.

After this the properties are:

externs$ svn propget svn:externals .
http://test.example.com/project/library1/trunk library1
http://test.example.com/project/library2/trunk library1/library2