Using SVN for shared codebase with custom content

Question

I have a website that I need to deploy to about 30 customers. They are all the same apart from the branding. Using SVN, I would like to have one base version of the product, and then just the different branded content (images, CSS) for each customer. That way, when I maintain the base product, I don't have to replicate that change for each customer. Deployment would just be a case of updating and releasing.

Sounds simple, but I am having problems achieving this in SVN. I have been looking into SVN externals using a structure as follows:

• Main
• • Base
• • • .
• • • .
• • • Images

• Customer 1

• • Base
• • Custom
• • • Images

• Customer 2

• • Base
• • Custom
• • • Images

and then using externals pointing the Customer Base folders to the main base folder. That works, but I then need to overwrite (for example) the images in the Customer 1\\Base\\Images folder with the customer specific ones, and when I set up the externals for that it complains “Customer 1\\Base\\Images is not a working copy root”. It does appear to have overwritten the image with the customer one though.

Maybe externals are not the answer.

Answer 1

In your case, the interface is clearly separeted from the functionality. A possibility is the following (if I well understood your problem) :

Manage your application in a dedicated SVN repository (as usual, with your trunk, branches and tags). And manage your design versions in another repository, with for example the following structure :

./Customer_1
./Customer_1/trunk
./Customer_1/tags
./Customer_1/branches
./Customer_2
./Customer_2/trunk
./Customer_2/tags
./Customer_2/branches
...

With this separation, it's easy to you to manage the version number of your main application. And you have a "small" repository for each customer with possibility to easily copy a design version to start another one by svn copy .