Where should a Subversion repository be?

Question

Should it be on the development servers or a Subversion server?

I suppose this could be expanded to any client-server version control system.

Answer 1

We use a clean, blank slate for our repositories. Specifically, we use Slicehost for our main repository.

We started with a 256MB slice and upgraded later on to 512MB. Slicehost is great because you know you have a completely clean server to start with, and can build the things you need on your own.

Slicehosts' articles are top-notch.

Our repo server looks like this:

• Ubuntu Hardy Heron
• Subversion
• Apache
• Ruby on Rails
• Warehouse
• Passenger to serve Warehouse via Apache
• Daily and weekly backups through Slicehost

And that's about it. Not much overhead.

Edit: Not trying to sell Slicehost here, so if that's not kosher, let me know!

Edit again: James makes an excellent point about hosting proprietary code on a third-party server. Extra care should certainly be taken when selecting a host to do such a thing. Unfortunately, many companies simply don't have the resources to build and manage servers in house, which is where we found ourselves prior to selecting a host for our code.