how to collaborate source code across multiple locations

Question

We have a VMWare image running a gforge instance in our local network. We would like some external folks to be part of the dev process. We would like to keep this repository as the master SVN repository. What kind of options are available for sharing the code with the external resources and merging it back into our local repository.

Other options could be to host this entirely outside our network (on some of the hosting providers), this is not acceptable as it allows employees to access the code outside our network.

Am looking for suggestions to resolve this.

Answer 1

SVN is not a distributed VCS. If you want to stick with SVN, you will have no real alternative than to give them access to your local server from outside in some way.

If you want them to be able to commit to a separate, external repo that is not physically connected to your internal server, and to merge their changes into the central repository manually, you will need to look at a distributed VCS like Git or Mercurial.