suggestion for "Sparse Directories"

[Johnston, David]

Hi,

I ran into one confusion when trying to implement the ideas described in the sparse directories chapter - svn.advanced.sparsedirs.html
I did not know that under svn it is not possible to use update to set the depth of any directory that was not the child of an existing one in the working copy.

Thus
svn checkout file:///var/svn/repos mom-empty --depth empty

svn update --set-depth infinity mom-empty/daughter/granddaughter1

will fail, instead of creating just the granddaughter1 branch of daughter.

Instead you must create the granddaughter1's parent directory first as:

svn checkout file:///var/svn/repos mom-empty --depth empty

svn update --set-depth empty mom-empty/daughter

svn update --set-depth infinity mom-empty/daughter/granddaughter1

Perhaps others may be confused by this and could be helped if something like this <> <> were added:
But we can independently change the ambient depth value of any subdirectory inside the working copy, too. <The only constraint is that the subdirectory must be a child of an existing directory in the working copy> 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).  <Note that creating the empty daughter directory is required before the granddaughter subdirectory can be created recursively>
Thanks,
David F Johnston

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