Can you do a partial checkout with Subversion?

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 

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: 1. Checkout the common root directory 2. Update with depth=empty for intermediate directories 3. 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 [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 

I'm adding this information for those using the TortoiseSvn tool: to obtain the OP same functionality, you can use the Choose items... button in the Checkout Depth section of the Checkout function, as shown in the following screenshot:

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.