Anhksvn + Visual Studio - working with linked files

I could us开发者_Go百科e some advice. I'm in the process of adopting subversion, and I'm trying to put some existing Visual Studio 2010 projects into a repository. I have the current version of AhnkSvn.

The projects I have are organised as;

VS2010_projects\Project_A

VS2010_projects\Project_B

VS2010_projects\Project_C

VS2010_projects\Common_code

Where Project_A, Project_B and Project_C may all refer to one or more files in "Common_Code" In visual studio, these files will have been added using "add as link".

There is no actual project in "Common_code" just a collection of useful code files, which we're likely to re-use in different projects. (If we have a module or class which is re-used in various projects, then we often keep a single master copy in 'common-code', and link to it.) Visual Studio has no problem with this.

When I add any of the actual projects to subversion, all of their own files are added just fine, but the linked files are ignored. (And as a consequence, if I then get a working copy of those files, then it's just the project files which get handled, I won't get a copy of the linked files.) If I right click on any of the linked files, I the only subversion options I get are to refresh their status or to select the working folder.

I was wondering what the correct way to handle this situation was ?

Any advice would be much appreciated

Thanks !

Robert

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if I understand your question correctly then I think SVN is acting in the desired way. A linked file is merely a reference to another file. That reference exists only in the .csproj file which is checked in. It would not make sense to have two copies of the same file in source control, and it could lead to versioning issues. The first time you checkout your repository doing a build on your projects should copy the files from Common_code to the places that they're linked.

As an aside we've had alot of random issues with .csproj linked files and SVN, and so try to avoid linked files where possible. A better way to re-use files across projects is obviously just to embed them in a library and then reference that library. This should work fine with the exception of certain files like Javascript/CSS.

Also you may want to check out SVN externals, a workmate mentioned this can be used to share common libraries between multiple projects, although as a disclaimer I haven't tried this myself and can't comment on the merits or drawbacks of the approach.

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Thanks for the advice, I actually did something similar to your suggestion. I didn't want to make a full blown library, but I did make up a dummy project, and put my shared files into that. Then I added the dummy project to the repository.

AhnkSvn now seems to be satisfied that the linked files are under subversion control, and seems to handle them just fine. (I haven't added any reference to the dummy project to my existing projects - they just use the linked files as before - but now AhnkSvn shows me their status, and allows me to get the latest version, and commit changes.)

I can see the case for having a proper library - but that would have meant modifying a large body of existing projects. This approach lets me get up and running with Subversion without requiring those changes first.