SVN help needed - Creating a master CI Kit that all my sites will use

[eluser]skattabrain[/eluser]
I posted earlier in the lounge, but it's probably not the right place.

I'm creating a "CI Starter Kit" for my personal/client projects. Basically, it's the latest version of CI, some baseline configuration and a set of controllers and libraries that help me in things I need almost all the time ... aka - Authentication/user Management, Basic CMS, Blog ... things like that.

The goal is ... when I start a new client site, I create a new repository for it, then I install this starter kit and use it as the base, then I add the projects unique assets ... like the css, javascripts, icons, site pages, design, etc. So when I decide to add captcha capability to my clients site, I go back to the starter kit, code the functionality in, then pull the update into all the sites running the kit. So i code once, but all my sites get the new code.

I tried using SVN externals, but when I pull in the starter kit, it obviously now has, for example, the applications directory. When I try to create the projects unique files, SVN won't let me, at least not in the applications directory.

So what is the best way to put this together? I'm on windows btw - I read about symlinks but that's not going to help me out.

Thanks for your input!