One SVN repository or many?

Question

If you have multiple, unrelated projects, is it a good idea to put them in the same repository?

myRepo/projectA/trunk
myRepo/projectA/tags
myRepo/projectA/br         


        

Answer 1

For your specific case one(1) repository is perfect. You will save a lot of money. I always encourage people to use a single repository. Because it is similar to a single filesystem: It is easier

• You will have a single place where you look for code
• You will have a single authorisation
• You will have a single commit number(ever tried to build a project which is spread over 3 repos?)
• You can better reuse common libraries and track your progress in these libs(svn:externals are PITA and will not solve all problems)
• Projects planned as fully different items, can grow together and share functions and interfaces. This will be very difficult to achieve in multiple repos.

There is a single point for multiple repositories: administration of huge repos is uncomfortable. Dumping/loading huge repos takes a lot of time. But as you do not do any administration, I think it will not be your concern ;)

SVN scales very well with bigger repositories, there is no slowdown even on huge (>100GB) repositories.

So you will have less hassle with a single repository. But you really should think about the repo layout!