SVN externals alternative in team foundation server 2012

Question

Currently we use SVN for our source control. Because of the extra features and integration in the development environment we would like to migrate to TFS 2012.

We have a lot of portals running that are build in asp.net. Within our portal we use a lot of standard components. Currently all portals use the same code base. This means that whenever we change something in the shared codebase it is (whenever a portal is published) automatically distributed. We are very used to this way of working and we know there is a risk of breaking code in other portals. Though, publishing changes in all other portals would cost way to much time. So to do this we use externals in SVN.

I would really like to keep this functionality up and running. So my question is, is there a way to create a external like system in SVN or is there a realy good way that works just as efficient to replace this functionality.

Answer 1

There are a couple of suggestion in the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide.

If you download the "Everything" package and look in "All Guides" zip and have a read of "Advanced Version Control Guide".

Pages 5-19 (Version 2.1) cover Managing Shared Resources, there's a lot there and summarising it all for Stack Overflow will probably do the Ranger's an injustice, so I'll just point you there.