Sharing common projects?

[ewild]

I am trying to create a data layer using EF that can be shared across multiple projects.

My current way to deal with this is to put everything into one folder, and branch all at once. This seems to have problems, in that I am slowly adding more and more projects to the big trunk. I would like to have datasources like accounitng and crm and others that are common and can be reused and strung together as needed.

I have looked at various sources to see what the prevailing thoughts are on this. Microsoft seems to recommend branching directly into the calling projects folder. Something like:

Code: Select all

DAL
	/Trunk >> Branch this
WebApp
	/Trunk
		/BranchedDAL
		/WebAppSrc
WinApp
	/Trunk
		/BranchedDAL
		/WinAppSrc

It seems like it could quickly become a mess, in that you may not know all of the branches that are out there?

I am looking for some input on this idea:

Branch the DAL in its own source tree, and the share it. This way, I would know all of the shares that are being used, and would be able to merge them from the branches that are shared. It would look something like:

Code: Select all

DAL
	/Branches
		/WebBranch >> Share to Web
		/WinBranch >> Share to Win
WebApp
	/Branches
		/NewFunctionalityBranch
			/SharedDAL
			/WebSRC
	/Trunk
WinApp
	/Branches
		/NewFunctionality
			/SharedDAL
			/WinSRC
	/Trunk

Does this make sense, and if not, how do you share common projects around to different projects?

EWild

[Beth]

I'm not sure I'm following the explanation here.

It sounds like you are suggesting branching just the code that needs to be branched and then sharing the parts that are the same for every project into the branches. Is that right? That should be ok I think.