Check Out

Use Project|Check Out to create a working copy from a project which is already under SVN control.

Page ‘Repository’

The first step is to enter the URL of the repository you want to check out from. On the subsequent pages you will be able to specify a subdirectory within the repository, so you don’t have to append the subdirectory to the repository URL on this page.

Click Next to continue.

Page ‘Location’

After switching to this page, the repository will be scanned. A few moments later you’ll see the root content of the repository. Expand the tree nodes to scan into the repository structure. For details refer to Repository Browser.

Use Show Revision to define the revision of your selected directory that you want to check out. Please note that the repository contents might change when changing the revision.

Select the repository directory you want to check out and click Next.

When working with trunk, tags and branches it’s not recommended to check out the whole project, because due to the increasing number of tags the working copy (not the repository) would be growing quickly, over time accumulating a lot of unneeded files on your disk. Instead you should check out only trunk or a certain tag or branch and if necessary switch to another location. SmartSVN tries to detect whether you are going to check out a whole project instead of a single trunk/branch and will warn you accordingly.

Sometimes you won’t need to check out the complete trunk/branch of a project, but only a certain sub-directory. Certain features (such as tags) won’t work on sub-directories, hence SmartSVN will ask you whether to check out necessary parent directory non-recursively. Such non-recursive check outs (also called ‘sparse checkouts’) are efficient and recommended in a situation like this.

Page ‘Local Directory’

On this page you can select the local directory into which the working copy should be checked out. Use the options to define how the directory name should be created. The Checkout Directory depends on these options and always shows the final directory into which the checkout will occur (i.e. where the root .svn- directory will be created).

When deselecting Check out recursively, you will only check out the selected repository directory itself, but no subdirectories. Later you may choose to check out certain subdirectories with Update More . Non-recusive checkouts can be useful if you wish to skip certain modules of a project.

Click Next to proceed.

Page ‘Project’

On this page you can select whether to check out a working copy, i.e. to create the necessary .svn/ structure, or to simply Export the files from the repository.

With Check out a working copy, SmartSVN will create a working copy for your checkout source. In this case you may select Add a new project for this working copy, specify the project’s name and specify an optional group (Project Manager ) to which the project will be added. You may select Add to current project to add the working copy to the currently open project (if present). Or you may select Don’t manage as project to just create a temporary project for this working copy.

With Export only, SmartSVN will just export the files from repository without creating the .svn/ subdirectory, meaning you won’t be able to perform the usual SVN commands on these exported directories and files.

Click Next to proceed.