Is it acceptable/good to store binaries in SVN?

Question

We would like to share runtime project binary files. So every team member could take current working version. It is acceptable/good to store runtime binaries in the SVN?

Answer 1

Our Java .jar file builds were binding in their .jar file dependencies, which we were checking into svn. A lot of this was redundant in practice, but we wanted to insure every Java app build we produced had precisely the libraries it underwent QA with.

What really aggravated me, though, with this approach was when I started doing remote connections to the repository and syncing. Would take forever to just churn through all the binary libraries.

We've since abandoned that practice and now use Maven to manage library dependencies - even for projects that we're still building with ant. No more binaries being checked into svn. Life is much better on several fronts because of this shift of strategy. And we have the rigorous control over versions of library dependencies that we desired.

For our .NET builds, one of my developers has devised a solution that works in large part like Maven in respect to all the dependency management stuff, and is achieving much the same benefit there too.