>
>> Does SVN handle this differently?
>
> yes and now.
> yes: you don't _have_ to create a tag and a branch whenever you
> import code.
> no: you can import code that is maintained elsewhere into a branch,
> a tag, the trunk (or just any other directory)
> yes: svn is able to handle references to external (svn!)
> repositories (which imo is better than blindly importing anything
> useful)

That sounds horrendous to me, then you are forced to track their
changes.  Could you imagine if we tracked portaudio like that with
Pd?  We'd spent half our dev time fixing breakage caused by portaudio
changes.  It's a very useful thing to keep code static until you are
ready for change.

You can set a specific revision to reference, so that this does not happen.

A cool thing I've been doing recently with the externals feature is using them more like symlinks; so for portaudio you can put the revision you want to stay static in a central location ( e.g. /svnexternals/portaudio) and then set /that/ as the external directory.  That way you still have a single copy, but it is replicated to everywhere it is needed.

 

Cheers

Luke