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tained in a Subversion repository, you could also use Subversion’s externals defini-
tions to effectively pin down specific versions of that information to some location in
your own working copy directory (see “Externals Definitions” earlier in this chapter).
But sometimes you want to maintain custom modifications to third-party data in
your own version control system. Returning to the software development example,
programmers might need to make modifications to that third-party library for their
own purposes. These modifications might include new functionality or bug fixes,
maintained internally only until they become part of an official release of the third-
party library. Or the changes might never be relayed back to the library maintainers,
existing solely as custom tweaks to make the library further suit the needs of the soft-
ware developers.
Now you face an interesting situation. Your project could house its custom modifica-
tions to the third-party data in some disjointed fashion, such as using patch files or
full-fledged alternate versions of files and directories. But these quickly become
maintenance headaches, requiring some mechanism by which to apply your custom
changes to the third-party data, and necessitating regeneration of those changes with
each ...