Checkout one file from subversion

Question

"It is not possible to check out a single file. The finest level of checkouts you can do is directory level."

Any ideas on how to get around this issue when using Subversion?

We have this folder in subversion where we keep all our images.I just want to check out one file(image) from that.This folder is really big and has ton of other stuff which I don't need now.

Thanks

Answer 1

Use 'svn cat' or 'svn export'

For that, you don't need to fetch the working directory, but you will not be able to commit any changes you make. If you need to make changes and commit then, you need a working directory, but oyu don't have to fetch it completely. Checkout revision where directory was still/almost empty, and then use 'svn cat' to extract the file from HEAD.

Answer 2

Try 'svn export' instead of 'svn checkout', that works for single files.

Reason for that limitation is, that checkout creates a working copy, that contains meta-information about repository, revision, attributes etc. That metadata is stored in subdirectories named '.svn'. And single files don't have subdirectories.

Answer 3

do you need to "checkout" the file or just "get" the file to display it? The second thing should be easy (see the other answers), the first thing isn't possible.

Answer 4

If you want to view readme.txt in your repository without checking it out:

$ svn cat http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/test/readme.txt
This is a README file. You should read this.

Tip: If your working copy is out of date (or you have local modifications) and you want to see the HEAD revision of a file in your working copy, svn cat will automatically fetch the HEAD revision when you give it a path:

$ cat foo.c
This file is in my local working copy and has changes that I've made.

$ svn cat foo.c
Latest revision fresh from the repository!

Source

Answer 5

I'd just browse it and export the single file. If you have http access, just use the web browser to find the file and grab it.

If you need to get it back in after editing it, that might be slightly more tedious but I'm sure there might be an svn import function...

Answer 6

If you just want a file without revision information use

svn export <URL>

Answer 7

Go to the repo-browser right-click the file and use 'Save As', I'm using TortoiseSVN though.

Answer 8

The simple answer is that you svn export the file instead of checking it out.

But that might not be what you want. You might want to work on the file and check it back in, without having to download GB of junk you don't need.

If you have subversion 1.5, then do a sparse checkout:

svn checkout <url_of_big_dir> <target> --depth empty
cd <target>
svn up <file_you_want>

For older svn, you might benefit from the following:

• Checkout the directory using a revision back in the distant past, when it was less full of junk you don't need.
• Update the file you want, to create a mixed revision. This works even if the file didn't exist in the revision you checked out.
• Profit!

An alternative (for instance if the directory has too much junk right from the revision in which it was created) is to do a URL->URL copy of the file you want into a new place in the repository (effectively this is a working branch of the file). Check out that directory and do your modifications.

I'm not sure whether you can then do a merge entirely in the repository without a working copy of the target - I've never needed to. If so then do that.

If not then unfortunately you may have to find someone else who does have the whole directory checked out and get them to do it. Or maybe by the time you've finished making your mods, the rest of it will have had time to download...

Answer 9

With Subversion 1.5, it becomes possible to check out (all) the files of a directory without checking out any subdirectories (the various --depth flags). Not quite what you asked for, but a form of "less than all."

Answer 10

Try below solution

http://phptrex.com/index.php/topic,19.0.html

Answer 11

cd C:\path\dir

svn checkout https://server/path/to/trunk/dir/dir/parent_dir--depth empty

cd C:\path\dir\parent_dir

svn update filename.log

***Edit filename.log

svn commit -m "this is a comment."

Answer 12

but this still require parent_dir to be emptpy. How can I checkout a single file w/o having a folder on its own ? If I checkout selecting a single file thru TortoiseSNV - msg is: you selected sigle file not a folder and errored out. My case is w/o creating a new folder on repo side - be able to check out - edit and check back in, thanks for help.

Answer 13

I have found it possible to do single file checkout/commits using SVN's "Update to revision" option. More information on my website @ http://rafaelbelliard.com/archives/17

Answer 14

Using sparse check out technique, you CAN check out a particular file that is already checked out or exists...with a simple trick:

After checkout the top level of your repo using the 'this item only'option, in Windows explorer, you MUST first right-click on the file you need to update; choose Repo Browser in context menu; find that file AGAIN in repo browser, and right-click. You should now see the "update item to revision" in context menu.

I'm not sure whether it is an undocumented feature or simply a bug. It took me an extended after-work hours to finally find this trick. I'm using TSVN 1.6.2.

-Richard Chen

Answer 15

A tortoiseSVN Equivalent solution of the accepted answer (I had written this in an internal document for my company as we are newly adopting SVN) Thought it would be helpful to share here as well:

Checking out a single file: Subversion does not support checkout of a single file, it only supports checkout of directory structures. (Reference: http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#single-file-checkout). *This is because with every directory that is checked out as a working copy, the metadata regarding modifications/file revisions is stored as an internal hidden folder (.svn/svn). This is not supported currently (v1.6) for single files.

Alternate Recommended Strategy: You will have to do the checkout directory part only once, following that you can directly go and checkout your single files. Do a sparse checkout of the parent folder and directory structure. A sparse checkout is basically checking out only the folder structure without populating the content files. So you checkout only the directory structures and need not checkout ALL the files as was the concern. Reference: http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN%5Fen/tsvn-dug-checkout.html

Step 1: Proceed to repository browser

Step 2: Right click the parent folder within the repository containing all the files that you wish to work on and Select Checkout.

Step 3: Within new popup window, ensure that the checkout directory points to the correct location on your local Pc. There will also be a dropdown menu labeled “checkout depth”. Choose “Only this item” or “Immediate children, including folders” depending on your requirement. Second option is recommended as, if you want to work on nested folder, you can directly proceed the next time otherwise you will have to follow this whole procedure again for the nested folder.

Step 4: The parent folder(s) should now be available within your locally chosen folder and is now being monitored with SVN (a hidden folder “.svn” or “_svn” should now be present). Within repository now, right click the single file that you wish to have checked out alone and select the “Update Item to revision” option. The single file can now be worked on and checked back into the repository.

Hope this helps.

Answer 16

This issue is covered by:

http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=823

There is a script attached that lets you check out a single file from svn, make changes, and commit the changes back to the repository, but you can't run "svn up" to checkout the rest of the directory. It's been tested with svn-1.3, 1.4 and 1.6.

Answer 17

Steve Jessops answer did not work for me. I read the help files for svn and if you just have an image you probably don't want to check it in again unless you're doing photoshop, so export is a better command then checkout as its unversioned (but that is minor). And the --depth ARG should not be empty but files to get the files in the immediate directory. So you'll get all the fiels, not just the one, but empty returns nothing from the repository.

 svn co --depth files <source> <local dest>

or

svn export --depth files <source> <local dest>

as for the other answers, cat lets you read the content which is good only for text, not images of all things.

Answer 18

An update in case what you really need can be covered by having the file included in a checkout of another folder.

Since SVN 1.6 you can make file externals, a kind of svn links. It means that you can have another versioned folder that includes a single file. Committing changes to the file in a checkout of this folder is also possible.

It's very simple, checkout the folder you want to include the file, and simply add a property to the folder

svn propedit svn:externals .

with content like this:

file.txt /repos/path/to/file.txt

After you commit this, the file will appear in future checkouts of the folder. Basically it works, but there are some limitations as described in the documentation linked above.