I am trying to decide, or at least get information to help me decide, whether subversion or "something else" would be suitable for us. Let me explain the situation. We use a product which we customise and add features to, both of which mean changing the source. Sometimes these changes also get accepted by the vendor and are included in the next release. So when we get a new release we get a new bundle of source files and so forth (in some format which I don't know offhand, but probably isn't important to this anyway), and we then have to manually merge the changes we have made to the last version into the new version, some of which might be changes we already have.
I think one way of thinking about it is that our changes are a series of patches, some of which are accepted upstream and some not (this is what makes me wonder whether something other than subversion might be better for us, but that might be just my brain making a connection between the word "patch" and systems that I know use this kind of patching concept, such as darcs). Maybe there is an alternative way of thinking about the situation which means that subversion, which I am more at home with, would be suited. So the first question is, do you think subversion is suitable in this case, and if not is there something "better" (in the sense it will be easier for us to use) that you can recommend? So the first question is, do you think subversion is suitable in this case, and if not is there something "better" (in the sense it will be easier for us to use) that you can recommend? Secondly, if subversion is suitable, what's the best way to use it in this situation (regarding branching, releasing, etc.)? I worked somewhere with this kind of situation before (changing and customising vendor code, with new vendor releases being introduced from time to time), and we basically used branches for each new vendor, and internal, release. Where I am now, we have a very short internal release cycle, along the lines of "code it, ship it!" (we effectively work directly on the live system, which I am not in favour of, but we do need that quick turnaround from code-change to production system). At the other place we had a script that did a lot of the merging between the production branch, where bug fixes would be implemented, and the "new features" branch where we would be working. Obviously I don't have that script now, but is there anything around that can do that kind of merging, if I managed to convince people to adopt that kind of way or working? Or is there some better way of working in this situation? Okay, so "better" is somewhat subjective, but I am open to ideas so don't be afraid to throw them into the middle. Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
