# Externals project: a way to do svn:externals -like actions with any combo of SCMs

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/externals-project-a-way-to-do-svn-externals-like-actions-with-any-combo-of-scms/147756>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 5, 2008, 3:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/externals-project-a-way-to-do-svn-externals-like-actions-with-any-combo-of-scms/147756 "2008-09-05T03:55:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Miles\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Miles\_G](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Miles_G)\
**Post date:** [September 5, 2008, 3:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/externals-project-a-way-to-do-svn-externals-like-actions-with-any-combo-of-scms/147756/1 "2008-09-05T03:55:20Z")

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I’ve just finished my first release of an open source project for  
doing svn:externals -like actions/deployment with any combination of  
subprojects managed under different source control management systems.

I have several projects, some of which are managed under subversion,  
and some managed under git. What’s worse, is each project has several  
subprojects (rails plugins, perhaps a vendor/rails), half of which are  
managed under git the other half under svn.

I really miss using the svn:externals feature of subversion for  
managing subprojects. svn:externals allowed me to have your  
subprojects be managed by a different repository than your main  
project. Doing a checkout/export automatically checks out/exports the  
subprojects. Doing a status will show you if any modified files in  
subprojects.

ext allows you to use this same workflow with any combination of  
source control management systems.

I have written a tutorial for ext at [http://nopugs.com/ext-tutorial](http://nopugs.com/ext-tutorial)  
The source code is also available at  
[GitHub - azimux/externals: provides a svn:externals like workflow in an scm agnostic manner](http://github.com/azimux/externals)

It should be pretty easy to install and play with and is quite  
feature-complete

This is my first ever attempt at contributing an open source project  
to the community. Any advice/suggestions would be much appreciated 🙂  
I started this project out of necessity to get around the annoyances  
of using git/svn together for managing and deplying projects with  
subprojects, and think it could be really beneficial to other  
programmers.

Thanks,  
Miles