I am surprised no has mentioned that this is discussed in Version Control with Subversion, which is available free online, here.
I read up on the issue awhile back and it really seems like a matter of personal choice, there is a good blog post on the subject here. EDIT: Since the blog appears to be down, (archived version here), here is some of what Mark Phippard had to say on the subject.
These are some of the advantages of the single repository approach.
- Simplified administration. One set of hooks to deploy. One repository to backup. etc.
- Branch/tag flexibility. With the code all in one repository it makes it easier to create a branch or tag involving multiple projects.
- Move code easily. Perhaps you want to take a section of code from one project and use it in another, or turn it into a library for several projects. It is easy to move the code within the same repository and retain the history of the code in the process.
Here are some of the drawbacks to the single repository approach, advantages to the multiple repository approach.
- Size. It might be easier to deal with many smaller repositories than one large one. For example, if you retire a project you can just archive the repository to media and remove it from the disk and free up the storage. Maybe you need to dump/load a repository for some reason, such as to take advantage of a new Subversion feature. This is easier to do and with less impact if it is a smaller repository. Even if you eventually want to do it to all of your repositories, it will have less impact to do them one at a time, assuming there is not a pressing need to do them all at once.
- Global revision number. Even though this should not be an issue, some people perceive it to be one and do not like to see the revision number advance on the repository and for inactive projects to have large gaps in their revision history.
- Access control. While Subversion's authz mechanism allows you to restrict access as needed to parts of the repository, it is still easier to do this at the repository level. If you have a project that only a select few individuals should access, this is easier to do with a single repository for that project.
- Administrative flexibility. If you have multiple repositories, then it is easier to implement different hook scripts based on the needs of the repository/projects. If you want uniform hook scripts, then a single repository might be better, but if each project wants its own commit email style then it is easier to have those projects in separate repositories
When you really think about, the revision numbers in a multiple project repository are going to get high, but you are not going to run out. Keep in mind that you can view a history on a sub directory and quickly see all the revision numbers that pertain to a project.
Create a users file (i.e. users.txt
) for mapping SVN users to Git:
user1 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
user2 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
...
You can use this one-liner to build a template from your existing SVN repository:
svn log -q | awk -F '|' '/^r/ {gsub(/ /, "", $2); sub(" $", "", $2); print $2" = "$2" <"$2">"}' | sort -u > users.txt
SVN will stop if it finds a missing SVN user, not in the file. But after that, you can update the file and pick up where you left off.
Now pull the SVN data from the repository:
git svn clone --stdlayout --no-metadata --authors-file=users.txt svn://hostname/path dest_dir-tmp
This command will create a new Git repository in dest_dir-tmp
and start pulling the SVN repository. Note that the "--stdlayout" flag implies you have the common "trunk/, branches/, tags/" SVN layout. If your layout differs, become familiar with --tags
, --branches
, --trunk
options (in general git svn help
).
All common protocols are allowed: svn://
, http://
, https://
. The URL should target the base repository, something like http://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/repository. The URL string must not include /trunk
, /tag
or /branches
.
Note that after executing this command it very often looks like the operation is "hanging/frozen", and it's quite normal that it can be stuck for a long time after initializing the new repository. Eventually, you will then see log messages which indicate that it's migrating.
Also note that if you omit the --no-metadata
flag, Git will append information about the corresponding SVN revision to the commit message (i.e. git-svn-id: svn://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/<branchname/trunk>@<RevisionNumber> <Repository UUID>
)
If a user name is not found, update your users.txt
file then:
cd dest_dir-tmp
git svn fetch
You might have to repeat that last command several times, if you have a large project until all of the Subversion commits have been fetched:
git svn fetch
When completed, Git will checkout the SVN trunk
into a new branch. Any other branches are set up as remotes. You can view the other SVN branches with:
git branch -r
If you want to keep other remote branches in your repository, you want to create a local branch for each one manually. (Skip trunk/master.) If you don't do this, the branches won't get cloned in the final step.
git checkout -b local_branch remote_branch
# It's OK if local_branch and remote_branch are the same names
Tags are imported as branches. You have to create a local branch, make a tag and delete the branch to have them as tags in Git. To do it with tag "v1":
git checkout -b tag_v1 remotes/tags/v1
git checkout master
git tag v1 tag_v1
git branch -D tag_v1
Clone your GIT-SVN repository into a clean Git repository:
git clone dest_dir-tmp dest_dir
rm -rf dest_dir-tmp
cd dest_dir
The local branches that you created earlier from remote branches will only have been copied as remote branches into the newly cloned repository. (Skip trunk/master.) For each branch you want to keep:
git checkout -b local_branch origin/remote_branch
Finally, remove the remote from your clean Git repository that points to the now-deleted temporary repository:
git remote rm origin
Best Answer
You have two options for this. The one you already mentioned, and that is to have a trunk for each project (option 1):
Option 2 would be to have one trunk with each project being a subfolder under trunk:
The advantage of option 1 is that you can branch and tag each project independently. This is desirable if you need to deploy each project seperately.
Option 2 is desirable if all the projects are deployed together. This is because you only have to tag the repository once when deploying.
Since you are using Subversion for school projects, you need to ask yourself whether you will ever need to tag your work. You can also ask yourself whether you ever need to create branches (you probably would want to if you want to experiment a bit). You will also need to ask yourself whether you are happy to branch ALL your work together as one, of whether you prefer the flexibility of branching each project independently.
The rule of thumb that I always follow: trunk together whatever we deploy together.
(By the way - you can have many trunks in the same repository - this is almost equivalent to having one trunk in multiple repositories, except that each repository maintains its own revision counter and you cannot merge between repositories.)