How to downgrade a subversion tree from v1.7 to v1.6?

Question

Is there a way to downgrade a subversion working copy from version 1.7 to version 1.6x?

Version 1.7 uses a single .svn root folder and sqlite for metadata so the conversion python script from tigris.org does not work.

Do you know of a solution that does not involve making a clean checkout under v1.6 and copying over the modified files?

Answer 1

There is a script to do working copy downgrades.

However, this does not support downgrading from the 1.7 format to the 1.6 format, nor will it ever support this in the future. The comments in the script tell us why this is impossible:

  # Downgrading from format 11 (1.7-dev) to format 10 is not possible,   # because 11 does not use has-props and cachable-props (but 10 does).   # Naively downgrading in that situation causes properties to disappear   # from the wc. 

Answer 2

I found the best way to delete the .svn folder from the 1.7 working copy then checkout the 1.6 on top of it. It worked for me, it might work for you as well. (with using tortoiseSvn 1.6.x client)