Subversion on Drupal

[Andy Canfield]

My goal in learning Subversion was to put our web site under version 
control. Now I have my doubts as to whether Subversion can handle it.

The web site uses Drupal. And Drupal has the characteristic that much of 
the site is contained in a MySQL database. For example, if I install a 
module and set it up, the module is a disk file, but the configuration 
of that module is in the database. If I make a change, part of the 
change may be in a PHP code file on disk, part may be in the database. 
The database contains both user data and configuration data, intermingled.

I could get Subversion to work. I would have a pre-commit script to back 
up the database to a disk file in the working copy. I would have a 
post-checkout script to reload the database from the disk file. Along 
with svn commit and svn checkout, this would give us the ability to roll 
back to any earlier version.

What I can not imagine is how to get more than one person to be able to 
work on the site. Yes, Subversion would be able to merge changes to the 
disk files. But I don't see how Subversion can handle merging changes to 
the database. The MySQL database is text; perhaps someone here as 
experience with that. Can MySQL backup files be merged?