Hi I'd like to explain my high level problem, which I hoped externals would solve. Maybe someone will have a suggestion how to properly address this.
Our source code is used by several developer groups. A few files need to be confidential to one group. We can set access permissions on these files in the trunk using Apache to support this. However, if a member of that privileged group branches or tags the trunk, those files will get copied to the new branch/tag and be visible to all. Subversion can't copy the permission structure across. This provides a maintenance headache. So I thought we could put the confidential files in another repo and set appropriate permissions there. The main project will bring those few files in and the access permissions of the source repo will always be imposed wherever the external appears. But this is not really what externals are meant for, so I feel unhappy about this solution. Furthermore, it seems best to always make externals use fixed revisions, which isn't what we would want as those confidential files will be continually changing. Please can anyone suggest a better way of solving this problem? Best regards David