Subversion import annoyances

While I am extremely grateful that SVN exists and I can use it to backup and manage absolutely everything (websites and source code for all of my projects), there is one thing that really annoys me:

When importing a directory via "svn import", it cannot be used as working directory - you have to check it out again after importing. This is really annoying, especially if the repository is somewhat large and you need to download 20 MiB after already waiting for the upload.

Further, you often don't remember this problem, change the code after importing and get hit by it when trying to "svn commit" in the imported directory - "not a working copy".

If someone knows how to fix this, please write me a mail.

2008-07-26: The solution

  1. Create empty directory
  2. Import this directory onto the svn server
  3. Remove directory
  4. Checkout svn directory into your source dir
  5. Add all files
  6. Commit
  7. Be happy

Written by Christian Weiske.

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