Question

I’m having some issues using TortoiseSVN/SVN with working folders and the .SVN folder.

Say I have a structure like the following:

trunk/
     src/
     sdk/
     lib/

If I wanted to check out the src folder and sdk folder but NOT the lib folder and I do a checkout on the two folders separately, the .SVN folders will be under both src/ and sdk/.

How, then, would I get the /trunk/ folder itself under source control? If I do a checkout then it will checkout everything including the lib folder, unless I limit the depth, in which case it won’t know about any subfolders.

Really what I need is some way to sync folders.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I have not used the feature myself, but Subversion supports “sparse directories”.

In our example, we operated only on the root of our working copy, changing its ambient depth value. But we can independently change the ambient depth value of any subdirectory inside the working copy, too. Careful use of this ability allows us to flesh out only certain portions of the working copy tree, leaving other portions absent altogether (hence the “sparse” bit of the feature’s name). Here’s an example of how we might build out a portion of one branch of our family’s tree, enable full recursion on another branch, and keep still other pieces pruned (absent from disk).

You can read more in the svnbook entry for Spare Directories