SVN checkout to existing directory

Question

I'm trying to do a checkout to an existing directory. The files that are checked in mimics the existing directory to an extent (except it has some folders and files). How do I do a checkout so that SVN will take the files from my repo and "merge" it with the existing directories. I do not care about those existing directories/files, so they never need to be in SVN.

Answer 1

Just do svn checkout. You checkout a working copy over an existing directory tree on your filesystem. A simple example is given in SVNBook | Vendor Branches.

svn checkoutcan overlay an existing directory and, if the --force option is provided, do so in manner that allows the differences between the checked-out tree and the target tree that the checkout overlayed to remain as local modifications in the new working copy.

You say that you don't care about other unversioned items in the working copy, so you may want to add them to svn:ignore pattern. Ignoring those unversioned items will help you to avoid accidental commits and you won't see them in svn status output.