SVN in-place import and checkout

Question

Let's say you've used svnadmin to create a repository at /svn/foo/mydirname, and you want to version control /home/user/mydirname (is that what you mean?).

Then do the following:

cd /home/user/mydirname
svn co file:///svn/foo/mydirname . #This only creates the ".svn" folder for version control
svn add ./*                        #Tell svn you want to version control all files in this dir
svn ci                             #Check the files in

Your directory is now version controlled!

Yes, you can import an existing directory (with contents) into an SVN repository and use the current location as your version-controlled working copy. Go at it as follows:

Suppose your (un-versioned) project sources are in /home/user/projectx, and your repository is ready at file:///svnrepo

1. First, create an empty directory somewhere outside of your project tree, say, /tmp/empty. Import that empty directory in your Subversion repository:

   cd /tmp/empty
   
   svn import . file:///svnrepo/projectx
   

2. Go into your populated project directory. Now check out the repository location you created in step 1:

   cd /home/user/projectx
   
   svn checkout file:///svnrepo/projectx .
   

This will add the .svn files to your populated project directory, but it will not do anything else, so your existing files are safe.

3. Next, add the directory with your files to the repository:

   svn add *
   
   svn commit -m 'initial commit'
   

Done.