Question

I have a large application in a production environment that I’m trying to move under version control. So, I created a new repo and imported the app, minus various directories and files that shouldn’t be under version control. Now, I need to make the installed copy a checkout (but still retain the extra files). At this point, in a recent version of SVN, I’d simply do a checkout over top the existing directory using the –force option. But sadly, I have an ancient version of SVN, from before when the –force option was added (and can’t yet upgrade… long story).

So, I checked out the app to another directory, and want to simply copy all of the .svn directories into the original directory, thus turning the original into a checkout whilst leaving alone the extra files. Now, maybe I’m just having a rough day and missing something that’s in plain site, but I can’t seem to be able to figure this out. Here are the approaches I’ve tried so far:

1. Use rsync: I can’t seem to hit the right combination of include and exclude directives to recursively capture all the .svn directories but nothing else.

2. Use cp: I can’t figure out a good way to have it hit all the .svn directories across and down through the whole app.

3. Use find with -exec cp: I’m running into trouble with the leading part of the pathnames of the found files messing up the destination paths. I can exclude it using -printf ‘%P’, but that doesn’t seem to go into the {} replacement for exec.

4. Use find with xargs to cp: I’m running into trouble with find sending over child directories before sending their parents. Unfortunately, find does not have a –breadth option.

Any thoughts out there?

Other info:

• bash 3.0.0.14
• rsync 2.6.3 p28
• cp 5.2.1
• svn 1.3.2

Answer 1

Use tar and find to capture the .svn dirs in a clean checkout, then untar into your app.

cd /tmp/
svn co XXX
cd XXX
find . -name .svn -print0 | tar cf /tmp/XXX.tar --null -T -
cd /to/your/app/
tar xf /tmp/XXX.tar

Edit: switched find/tar command to use NUL terminator for robustness in the face of filenames containing spaces. Original command was:

tar cf /tmp/XXX.tar $(find . -name .svn)