Microsoft has released some tools to support that for Git. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/05/24/the-large... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2017/05/30/optimizin...

Maybe we could look at the problem from the other side. Create tools to manage multi-repos like if they were a single mono-repo. A docke-compose for git.

It's sort of intrinsically a pain since then you lose atomic, cross project commits.

Android does this with a tool named repo. It tires into gerrit and you can treat the whole Android project as one repo.

Why is the problem with Subversion?

Are you proposing a subversion-based monorepo?

We get a lot of mileage out of Subversion as a monorepo. It certainly works better than people like to give it credit for.

Perforce Helix might be even better - it even has a DVCS model based on creating a "local server" that can fetch/push from a shared server asynchronously from use of that local server, and a hybrid model that allows for only parts of the repository to be hosted on your personal server, and other parts to follow the more traditional Subversion-like model. Things like exclusive locks on files that can't really be "merged" are also supported (for example, all your assets).

The only downside is that it's not open-source, and as a result has a much smaller community. It's free for up to 5 users, then "email us" for any more. But if a very flexible VCS model is something you need, it's the same as anything else you need to pay for.

Google used to use Perforce until they hit a certain scale, so it's likely it'll work for you until you hit that scale and can build your own tools too.

Well, it seems to fit the requirements better than git. Obviously, subversion is not used much. I would like to hear some experience reports what is the problem with it.

We have two issues with Subversion:

- it requires a certain discipline: we need branching in our workflow and this is handled mostly by convention in a subversion repository. We have "branches" that were created by less careful colleagues by copying subdirectories of trunk to the branches folder.

- all the tooling developers fled to work on making git bearable. It seems that there is good money in sugarcoating got and none in making good tools for Subversion (awareness of branches in Jenkins, decent code review...). We have a budget, but that does not compensate for the lead that git has in that regard.

Other than that, subversion fits our needs. It just works.

Subversion is not used much anymore - just in case you entered the industry after this.

Subversion has been used in basically each and every open source project as a replacement for the previously most used CVS.

Subversion was better tjan cvs, but still bad in many aspects, slow synchronization and bad branching and merging support come to my mind.

Because of these shortcomings and because of the idea of decentralized versioning coming up, many systems like git, mercurial, and others came up then, and git seems to be the most successful of these by now

That being said, not sure how and if subversion has improved by now, didn’t use it for years...