title: vlad the deployer: why do I need a scm folder?
body: <p>I'm learning to use vlad the deployer and I've got a question.</p>
  
  <p>Since I'm still learning I don't know what is pertinent to the question and what isn't, so please bear with me if I'm a little verbose.</p>
  
  <p>I've got 2 environments for a new application (test and production) besides my development machine.</p>
  
  <p>I've figured out this way to do the initial setup in my vlad.rake:</p>
  
  <pre><code>namespace :test
    task :set
      set :domain, 'test.myserver.com'
    end
  end
  
  namespace :production
    task :set
      set :domain, 'www.myserver.com'
    end
  end
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This way I can have environment-specific stuff inside the namespaces, and still have shared tasks. For example, this would be the initial setup for test:</p>
  
  <pre><code>rake vlad:test:set vlad:setup vlad:update
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This creates the following folders on my test server:</p>
  
  <pre><code>releases/
  scm/
  shared/
  current -&gt; symlink to last release (inside the releases folder)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>My question is: what's the point of the scm folder?</strong> </p>
  
  <p>Every time I do vlad:update, the following happens:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>svn checkout on the scm/ folder above</li>
  <li>svn export on the /releases/{date} folder</li>
  <li>update current symlink</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>So scm is a copy of my repository... but then there's an "export" copy of the repository on /releases/{date}. And that is the one used by the application... scm doesn't seem to be used by anyone?</p>
  
  <p>Wouldn't I be just fine without the scm folder?</p>