Using SVN Externals to work with Multiple Repositories

I am writing a library called HSL. This library will be a third-party library in Crackpot and used for encoding heuristics. In order to work with Crackpot code along with HSL, I will be using the "svn externals" mechanism.

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn.advanced.externals.html

Why not simply have a copy of the external library in local repository? The primary benefit is that changes made to the local copy can be committed to the external repository.


Mechanism:

~/tmp/co$ svn propedit svn:externals .
No changes to property 'svn:externals' on '.'
~/tmp/co$ svn propget svn:externals .
thirdparty/hsl/hsl_alpha_version  -r5 https://heuristic-selection-library.googlecode.com/svn/trunk

~/tmp/co$ tree
.
`-- thirdparty
    `-- hsl
        `-- hsl_alpha_version
            `hsl



Problems:

• More complex "svn stat" output: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2789344/dont-show-svnexternals-in-svn-status
• Changes made to external repository using the local copy must be explicitly synced with the svn:externals property values.