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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" /><title>Sparse Directories</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="styles.css" type="text/css" /><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.73.2" /><link rel="start" href="index.html" title="Version Control with Subversion" /><link rel="up" href="svn.advanced.html" title="Chapter 3. Advanced Topics" /><link rel="prev" href="svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html" title="Keyword Substitution" /><link rel="next" href="svn.advanced.locking.html" title="Locking" /></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Sparse Directories</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Chapter 3. Advanced Topics</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.advanced.locking.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr /></div><div class="sect1" lang="en" xml:lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="svn.advanced.sparsedirs"></a>Sparse Directories</h2></div></div></div><p>By default, Subversion commands on directories act in a
recursive manner. For example, <span class="command"><strong>svn checkout</strong></span>
creates a working copy with every file and directory in the
specified area of the repository, descending recursively through
the repository tree until the entire structure is copied to your
local disk. Subversion 1.5 introduces the
<code class="option">--depth</code> option which allows you to easily
checkout all or part working copy with the freedom to bring in
previously ignored files subdirectories at anytime. For
example, say we have a repository with the following
structure:</p><pre class="screen">
$ svn co file:///var/svn/repos mom
A mom/son
A mom/son/grandson
A mom/daughter
A mom/daughter/granddaughter1
A mom/daughter/granddaughter2
A mom/daughter/fishie.txt
A mom/kitty1.txt
A mom/doggie1.txt
Checked out revision 1.
</pre><p>Now, let's checkout the same tree with, but with no children
at all:</p><pre class="screen">
$ svn co file:///var/svn/repos mom --depth=empty
Checked out revision 1
</pre><p>Now let's dig a little deeper and checkout the tree with
only the files in the top-level directory:</p><pre class="screen">
svn co file:///var/svn/repos mom --depth=files
A mom/kitty1.txt
A mom/doggie1.txt
Checked out revision 1.
</pre><p>As you can see, we got only the files in the top-level
directory, and not the directories. If we want the files and
directories in the top-level directory, but not the children in
those directories, we can use the immediates argument:</p><pre class="screen">
svn co file:///var/svn/repos mom --depth=immediates
A mom/son
A mom/daughter
A mom/kitty1.txt
A mom/doggie1.txt
Checked out revision 1.
</pre><p>This retrieves the subdirectories in the top-level, but sets
the depth of each of these subdirectories to empty.</p><p>While we've used svn checkout as an example here, you can
use the <code class="option">--depth</code> option with many other
Subversion commands. Here's a brief overview of what each depth
argument does (See <a class="xref" href="svn.ref.html" title="Chapter 9. Subversion Complete Reference">Chapter 9, <i>Subversion Complete Reference</i></a> for details on
which commands use the <code class="option">--depth</code> option).</p><div class="variablelist"><dl><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">--depth=empty</code></span></dt><dd><p>Include only files or subdirectories that are already
in your working copy (which means none if you're doing a
fresh checkout).</p></dd><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">--depth=files</code></span></dt><dd><p>Increase the depth of the current directory to include
files, but not subdirectores</p></dd><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">--depth=immediates</code></span></dt><dd><p>Increase the depth of the current directory to include
both subdirectories with <code class="option">--depth=empty</code>
and files.</p></dd><dt><span class="term"><code class="literal">--depth=infinity</code></span></dt><dd><p>The default behavior. Increases the depth of the
current directory to, well, infinity (what indeed did you
expect?)</p></dd></dl></div><p>To illustrate how you might use sparse directorise, let's
say that you have a repository with 37 top-level
projects:</p><pre class="screen">
trunk/project1
trunk/project2
trunk/project3
...
trunk/project36
trunk/project37
</pre><p>If you're working on <code class="literal">project23</code> and it has
dependencies on <code class="literal">project14</code> and
<code class="literal">project29</code>, it would be convenient to checkout
those three projects as part of a cohesive working copy without
sucking down the other 34 projects. To do this, you could
perform the following series of actions:</p><pre class="screen">
$ svn checkout file:///var/svn/repos/trunk uberproject --depth=empty
...
$ cd uberproject
$ svn update project14
...
$ svn update project23
...
$ svn update project29
...
</pre><p>Now you have a minimally-sized working copy that will allow
you to commit changes to all three of these projects at
once.</p><p>Another time where sparse directories are useful is when
you've just done a merge into your working copy and you'd like
to see the property modifications that will be recorded as part
of the merge, running svn diff on your directory will pull down
all the changes in your working copy recursively, however, if
you use <code class="option">--depth=empty</code>, it will only show the
property modifications (i.e. only the changed mergeinfo) on the
root directory of your working copy.</p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr /><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="svn.advanced.props.special.keywords.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="svn.advanced.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="svn.advanced.locking.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Keyword Substitution </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Locking</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
