Feature branch with "local copy" of external

Hi, Hope there is a solution for my scenario - any ideas/comments will be appreciated. (Running svn 1.8 in windows env mainly using tortoisesvn as client) I'm using the feature branch approach where trunk is stable and developers create branches to dev new features; Featrure branch is tested on its own before reintegration into trunk. This approach requires a rebase action as some projects tend to take longer. I wrote a windows bat file to handle all all processes to assist developers which are not as savvy with svn concepts / commands: [LIST] [*][I]create [/I]new branch a (ver 1): svn copy trunk branch/a_v1 [*][I]rebase[/I]: create branch a_v2 as copy from trunk , checkout, merge all changes from branch a_v1 to a_v2, commit changes , switch to a_v2 (archive a_v1) [*][I]reintegrate[/I]: merge all changes from a_v2 to trunk, commit [/LIST] My problem is caused by dependencies on code in external folder "globals"; all branches are linked (via svn:externals) to this shared folder. I need to implement a way to also manage this shared code into my feature branch approach. If a developer make any changes to code in "globals" folder, they should be able to commit this to the local branch only and not to the actual shared folder (currently these commits obviously affect all branches which is not ideal). Some may say this is a layout issue in my repo but there are some valid reasons behind this and unfortunately I'm stuck with it. I want handle this when the feature branch is created: [LIST] [*]remove link to "globals" (propdel svn:externals) [*]make a local copy of the "globals" folder (svn export...) [*]add folder to branch (svn add..) [/LIST] But this means automatic merging / conflict handling will not be handled by the svn client (or will it?) on the reintegration / rebase steps. I may be overcomplicating the whole thing - I hope I'm missing a very simple way in handling this. Does anybody else have a similar problem and if so how did you resolve this ? Regrads gmb