Should I store all projects in one repository or multiple?

Question

I am currently using TortoiseSVN to manage a couple of the projects that I have on the go at the moment. When I first moved everything into source control I wasn\'t really

Answer 1

If you work with a lot of other people you might consider whether everyone needs the same level of access to every project. I think it is easier to give access rights per person if you put each project in a separate repository. ~~~

Answer 2

Depends to an extent what you mean by "project".

I have a general local repository containing random bits of stuff that I write (including my website, since it's small). A single-user local SVN repository is not going to suffer noticeable performance issues until you've spent a lot of years typing. By which time SVN will be faster anyway. So I've yet to regret having thrown everything in one repository, even though some of the stuff in there is completely unrelated other than that I wrote it all.

If a "project" means "an assignment from class", or "the scripts I use to drive my TiVo", or "my progress in learning a new language", then creating a repos per project seems a bit unnecessary to me. Then again, it doesn't cost anything either. So I guess I'd say don't change what you're doing. Unless you really want the experience of re-organising repositories, in which case do change what you're doing :-)

However, if by "project" you mean a 'real' software project, with public access to the repository, then I think separate repos per project is what makes sense: partly because it divides things cleanly and each project scales independently, but also because it's what people will expect to see.

Sharing code between separate repositories is less of an issue than you might think, since svn has the rather lovely "svn:externals" feature. This lets you point a directory of your repository at a directory in another repository, and check that stuff out automatically along with your stuff. See, as always, the SVN book for details.

Answer 3

I would store them in the same repository. It's kind of neater. Plus why would it matter for continuous integration and such - you can always pull a specific folder from the repository.

It's also easier to administer - accounts to one repository, access logs of one repository etc.

Answer 4

Yes, put everything in source control.

If you're using SVN, keep projects in their own repository - svn is slow, and gets slower.

Answer 5

I would absolutely keep each project in its own repository, separate from all others. This will give each project its own history of commits. Rollbacks on one project will not affect other projects.

Answer 6

For Subversion, I'd suggest putting everything in the same repository; the administrative overhead of setting up a new repository is too high to make it a no-brainer, so you're more likely not to version something and regret it later. Subversion provides plenty of fine-grained access controls if you need to restrict access to a portion of your repository.

As I begin to migrate my projects to Mercurial, however, I've switched to creating a repository per project, because it just takes a "hg init" to create a new one in place, and I can use the hg forest extension to easily perform operations on nested repositories. Subversion has svn:externals, which are somewhat similar, but require more administrative overhead.