svn export all but some directories

Question

I am doing a svn export of the repo to a temp location, then I remove some directories before I copy the code base to a deployment directory.

Is there a way to "exclude" a list of directories during the "export" command?

The reason for this is so that the export is faster (don't need to fetch stuff I remove in this deploy)tail and therefore the deployment script is faster.

Answer 1

You can use the concept of Sparse Directories Exclusion to achieve this. For details on it, you can read it here.

This blog post has also explained the above concept.

Say I no longer care about what’s going on some directory of one my project working copies. Maybe I don’t care about the Subversion project’s website any more. Well, with this new exclusion feature, I can tell Subversion to remove that directory:

$ cd ~/projects/subversion/trunk 
$ svn update --set-depth=exclude www
D         www 
$ ls www ls: cannot access www: No such file or directory 
$ 

Done deal. When I update my working copy in the future, I will not receive any changes aimed at that www directory. If I later decide that I once again care about that directory, I can “resubscribe” to it again:

$ svn update --set-depth=infinity www 
A    www 
A    www/links.html 
A    www/testing-goals.html 
… 
A    www/tigris-permissions.html 
A    www/webdav-usage.html Updated to revision 36292. 
$