Can you do a partial checkout with Subversion?

If I had 20 directories under trunk/ with lots of files in each and only needed 3 of those directories, would it be possible to do a Subversion checkout with only those 3 directories under trunk?

Indeed, thanks to the comments to my post here, it looks like sparse directories are the way to go. I believe the following should do it:

svn checkout --depth empty http://svnserver/trunk/proj
svn update --set-depth infinity proj/foo
svn update --set-depth infinity proj/bar
svn update --set-depth infinity proj/baz

Alternatively, --depth immediates instead of empty checks out files and directories in trunk/proj without their contents. That way you can see which directories exist in the repository.

---

As mentioned in @zigdon's answer, you can also do a non-recursive checkout. This is an older and less flexible way to achieve a similar effect:

svn checkout --non-recursive http://svnserver/trunk/proj
svn update trunk/foo
svn update trunk/bar
svn update trunk/baz

Subversion 1.5 introduces sparse checkouts which may be something you might find useful. From the documentation:

> ... sparse directories (or shallow checkouts) ... allows you to easily check out a working copy—or a portion of a working copy—more shallowly than full recursion, with the freedom to bring in previously ignored files and subdirectories at a later time.

I wrote a script to automate complex sparse checkouts.

#!/usr/bin/env python




'''
This script makes a sparse checkout of an SVN tree in the current working directory.




Given a list of paths in an SVN repository, it will:




Checkout the common root directory
Update with depth=empty for intermediate directories
Update with depth=infinity for the leaf directories
'''




import os
import getpass
import pysvn




author = "Karl Ostmo"
date = "July 13, 2011"



=============================================================================


XXX The os.path.commonprefix() function does not behave as expected!


See here: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-December/030947.html


and here: http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/201003/whats_the_point_of_ospathcommonprefix.html


and here (what ever happened?): http://bugs.python.org/issue400788



from itertools import takewhile
def allnamesequal(name):
return all(n==name[0] for n in name[1:])




def commonprefix(paths, sep='/'):
bydirectorylevels = zip(*[p.split(sep) for p in paths])
return sep.join(x[0] for x in takewhile(allnamesequal, bydirectorylevels))



=============================================================================



def getSvnClient(options):



password = options.svn_password
if not password:
	password = getpass.getpass('Enter SVN password for user "%s": ' % options.svn_username)

client = pysvn.Client()
client.callback_get_login = lambda realm, username, may_save: (True, options.svn_username, password, True)
return client



=============================================================================



def sparse_update_with_feedback(client, new_update_path):
revision_list = client.update(new_update_path, depth=pysvn.depth.empty)



=============================================================================



def sparse_checkout(options, client, repo_url, sparse_path, local_checkout_root):



path_segments = sparse_path.split(os.sep)
path_segments.reverse()

# Update the middle path segments
new_update_path = local_checkout_root
while len(path_segments) > 1:
	path_segment = path_segments.pop()
	new_update_path = os.path.join(new_update_path, path_segment)
	sparse_update_with_feedback(client, new_update_path)
	if options.verbose:
		print "Added internal node:", path_segment

# Update the leaf path segment, fully-recursive
leaf_segment = path_segments.pop()
new_update_path = os.path.join(new_update_path, leaf_segment)

if options.verbose:
	print "Will now update with 'recursive':", new_update_path
update_revision_list = client.update(new_update_path)

if options.verbose:
	for revision in update_revision_list:
		print "- Finished updating %s to revision: %d" % (new_update_path, revision.number)



=============================================================================



def group_sparse_checkout(options, client, repo_url, sparse_path_list, local_checkout_root):



if not sparse_path_list:
	print "Nothing to do!"
	return

checkout_path = None
if len(sparse_path_list) > 1:
	checkout_path = commonprefix(sparse_path_list)
else:
	checkout_path = sparse_path_list[0].split(os.sep)[0]



root_checkout_url = os.path.join(repo_url, checkout_path).replace("\\", "/")
revision = client.checkout(root_checkout_url, local_checkout_root, depth=pysvn.depth.empty)

checkout_path_segments = checkout_path.split(os.sep)
for sparse_path in sparse_path_list:

	# Remove the leading path segments
	path_segments = sparse_path.split(os.sep)
	start_segment_index = 0
	for i, segment in enumerate(checkout_path_segments):
		if segment == path_segments[i]:
			start_segment_index += 1
		else:
			break

	pruned_path = os.sep.join(path_segments[start_segment_index:])
	sparse_checkout(options, client, repo_url, pruned_path, local_checkout_root)



=============================================================================



if name == "main":



from optparse import OptionParser
usage = """%prog <path1> [path2] [more paths...]"""

default_repo_url = "http://svn.example.com/MyRepository"
default_checkout_path = "sparse_trunk"

parser = OptionParser(usage)
parser.add_option("-r", "--repo_url", type="str", default=default_repo_url, dest="repo_url", help='Repository URL (default: "%s")' % default_repo_url)
parser.add_option("-l", "--local_path", type="str", default=default_checkout_path, dest="local_path", help='Local checkout path (default: "%s")' % default_checkout_path)

default_username = getpass.getuser()
parser.add_option("-u", "--username", type="str", default=default_username, dest="svn_username", help='SVN login username (default: "%s")' % default_username)
parser.add_option("-p", "--password", type="str", dest="svn_password", help="SVN login password")

parser.add_option("-v", "--verbose", action="store_true", default=False, dest="verbose", help="Verbose output")
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()

client = getSvnClient(options)
group_sparse_checkout(
	options,
	client,
	options.repo_url,
	map(os.path.relpath, args),
	options.local_path)

Or do a non-recursive checkout of /trunk, then just do a manual update on the 3 directories you need.

If you already have the full local copy, you can remove unwanted sub folders by using --set-depth command.

svn update --set-depth=exclude www

See: http://blogs.collab.net/subversion/sparse-directories-now-with-exclusion

The set-depth command support multipile paths.

Updating the root local copy will not change the depth of the modified folder.

To restore the folder to being recusively checkingout, you could use --set-depth again with infinity param.

svn update --set-depth=infinity www

Sort of. As Bobby says:

svn co file:///.../trunk/foo file:///.../trunk/bar file:///.../trunk/hum

will get the folders, but you will get separate folders from a subversion perspective. You will have to go separate commits and updates on each subfolder.

I don't believe you can checkout a partial tree and then work with the partial tree as a single entity.

Not in any especially useful way, no. You can check out subtrees (as in Bobby Jack's suggestion), but then you lose the ability to update/commit them atomically; to do that, they need to be placed under their common parent, and as soon as you check out the common parent, you'll download everything under that parent. Non-recursive isn't a good option, because you want updates and commits to be recursive.