Checkout one file from Subversion

Question

"It is not possible to check out a single file. The finest level of checkouts you can do is at the directory level."

How do I get around this issue when using Subversion?

We have this folder in Subversion where we keep all our images. I just want to check out one file (image) from that. This folder is really big and has ton of other stuff which I don't need now.

Answer 1

Try svn export instead of svn checkout. That works for single files.

The reason for the limitation is that checkout creates a working copy, that contains meta-information about repository, revision, attributes, etc. That metadata is stored in subdirectories named '.svn'. And single files don't have subdirectories.

Answer 2

A TortoiseSVN equivalent solution of the accepted answer (I had written this in an internal document for my company as we are newly adopting SVN) follows. I thought it would be helpful to share here as well:

Checking out a single file: Subversion does not support checkout of a single file, it only supports checkout of directory structures. (Reference: http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#single-file-checkout). This is because with every directory that is checked out as a working copy, the metadata regarding modifications/file revisions is stored as an internal hidden folder (.svn/_svn). This is not supported currently (v1.6) for single files.

Alternate recommended strategy: You will have to do the checkout directory part only once, following that you can directly go and checkout your single files. Do a sparse checkout of the parent folder and directory structure. A sparse checkout is basically checking out only the folder structure without populating the content files. So you checkout only the directory structures and need not checkout ALL the files as was the concern. Reference: http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-dug-checkout.html

Step 1: Proceed to repository browser

Step 2: Right click the parent folder within the repository containing all the files that you wish to work on and Select Checkout.

Step 3: Within new popup window, ensure that the checkout directory points to the correct location on your local PC. There will also be a dropdown menu labeled “checkout depth”. Choose “Only this item” or “Immediate children, including folders” depending on your requirement. Second option is recommended as, if you want to work on nested folder, you can directly proceed the next time otherwise you will have to follow this whole procedure again for the nested folder.

Step 4: The parent folder(s) should now be available within your locally chosen folder and is now being monitored with SVN (a hidden folder “.svn” or “_svn” should now be present). Within the repository now, right click the single file that you wish to have checked out alone and select the “Update Item to revision” option. The single file can now be worked on and checked back into the repository.

I hope this helps.

Answer 3

cd C:\path\dir
svn checkout https://server/path/to/trunk/dir/dir/parent_dir--depth empty
cd C:\path\dir\parent_dir
svn update filename.log

(Edit filename.log)

svn commit -m "this is a comment."

Answer 4

If you just want to export the file, and you won't need to update it later, you can do it without having to use SVN commands.

Using TortoiseSVN Repository Browser, select the file, right click, and then select "Copy URL to clipboard". Paste that URL to your browser, and after login you should be prompted with the file download.

This way you can also select desired revision and download an older version of the file.

Note that this is valid if your SVN server has a web interface.

Answer 5

Do something like this:

mkdir <your directory>/repos/test

svn cat http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/test/readme.txt > <your directory>/repos/test/readme.txt

Basically the idea is create the directory where you want to grab the file from SVN. Use the svn cat command and redirect the output to the same named file. By default, the cat will dump information on stdio.

Answer 6

I'd just browse it and export the single file. If you have HTTP access, just use the web browser to find the file and grab it.

If you need to get it back in after editing it, that might be slightly more tedious, but I'm sure there might be an svn import function...