sparse svn update of deep directory structure

Question

Is there a way to have a sparse checkout of an SVN repo with deep nested directory structure.

I'm doing this using a listing of all the files in the repo and filtering for just *.xml:

svn list --recursive "http://myRepo.com/trunk" > allFiles.txt

I'm trying to do the following:

svn checkout "http://myRepo.com/trunk" --depth empty "myRepo"
svn update --set-depth empty project1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore/file.xml

I tried this but got an error saying it was skipping updating that file.

If I manually do the following I can get the file in my checkout (I want a --set-depth empty that gets the parent directories for a nested SVN path).

svn update --set-depth empty project1
svn update --set-depth empty project1/dirs/moreDirs
svn update --set-depth empty project1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore
svn update --set-depth empty project1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore/file.xml

svn status -v project1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore/file.xml
# prints svn file information

EDIT

I have 2 workarounds right now neither ideal

1. piece-meal svn update --set-depth empty

I wrote a bash function that takes the file path that I'm looking for a executes svn update --set-depth empty on it. For example for project1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore/file.xml it would call:

svn update --set-depth empty updateproject1 updateproject1/dirs updateproject1/dirs/moreDirs updateproject1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore updateproject1/dirs/moreDirs/evenMore/file.xml

It works but seems like it's pretty slow (maybe I can batch the calls for multiple files into one svn update call). I can't make multiple svn update calls for separate files in parallel because svn locks the repo.

Here's the full script:

function getContentFile() 
{

    CONTENT_FILE="$1"
    SVN_FILE="${SVN_REMOTE}${CONTENT_FILE}"
    LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE="${SVN_CHECKOUT}/${CONTENT_FILE}"
    LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE_DIR=$(dirname ${LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE})

    SVN_UPDATE_ARG="${CONTENT_FILE}"
    PARENT_DIR="$(dirname ${CONTENT_FILE})"
    if [ ! -e "${LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE}" ]; then
        pushd "${SVN_CHECKOUT}"
        while [ "$PARENT_DIR" != "." ]; do
            # Escape any spaces in the argument list being passed to svn update
            PARENT_ARG=$(echo $PARENT_DIR | sed 's/ /\\ /g')
            if [ -e "${SVN_CHECKOUT}/${PARENT_DIR}" ]; then
                # Stop if we detect a directory already controlled by SVN
                break
            fi
            SVN_UPDATE_ARG="$PARENT_ARG $SVN_UPDATE_ARG"
            PARENT_DIR="$(dirname ${PARENT_DIR})" || true
        done
        svn update --set-depth empty ${SVN_UPDATE_ARG}
    fi
}
# export function to use in xargs
export -f getContentFile

cat "$SVN_FILE_LISTING_CACHE" | egrep '\.xml$' | xargs -P 1 -n 1 -I{} bash -e -c 'getContentFile "$@"' _ {}

2. svn cat to get files

I can also just create the path for the folder structure and svn cat the file and I can do it on multiple files at the same time, but this suffers from not being connected to svn (e.g. I can't commit it back easily or update the file from svn without walking and matching the path), it's not a real svn checkout.

function getAllContentFiles() 
{
    FILE_REGEX="$1"
    #NUM_PROCESSORS=`sysctl hw.ncpu | awk '{print $2}'`
    # Do this in parallel (doesn't have to match number of actual processors)
    NUM_PROCESSORS=50
    #TODO: need to do it 1 at a time because of SVN lock for svn updates
    cat "$SVN_FILE_LISTING_CACHE" | egrep $FILE_REGEX | xargs -P ${NUM_PROCESSORS} -n 1 -I{} bash -ex -c 'getContentFile "$@"' _ {}
}

function getContentFile() 
{

    CONTENT_FILE="$1"
    SVN_FILE="${SVN_REMOTE}${CONTENT_FILE}"
    LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE="${SVN_CHECKOUT}/${CONTENT_FILE}"
    LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE_DIR=$(dirname ${LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE})

    SVN_UPDATE_ARG="${CONTENT_FILE}"
    PARENT_DIR="$(dirname ${CONTENT_FILE})"
    mkdir -p "${PARENT_DIR}"

    if [ ! -e "${LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE}" ]; then
        pushd "${SVN_CHECKOUT}"
        svn cat "${SVN_FILE}" > "${LOCAL_CONTENT_FILE}"
    fi
}

Answer 1

Since Subversion 1.7.0 update has accepted a --parents option that does what you want.

So you can do the following for example:

$ svn co --depth empty https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/subversion svn-sparse
 U   svn-sparse
Checked out revision 1544721.

$ svn up --parents trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_svn/protocol
A    trunk
A    trunk/subversion
A    trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_svn
Updating 'trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_svn/protocol':
A    trunk/subversion/libsvn_ra_svn/protocol
Updated to revision 1544721.