svn dump subrepo

Subversion tools enable you to dump only chosen parts of the original repository. This may be especially useful, when you want to separate a smaller project out from a bigger thing. svnadmin dump will be used along with svndumpfilter command. svndumpfilter must be run using one of the following subcommands: include or exclude. Depending on what is easier, you may specify which path prefixes (or directories) will be included into new subrepo dump - or which will be excluded.

For example, let's assume our original repository structure looks like the following:

/abc
  some content
/def
  some content
/ghi
  some content
/jkl
  some content

If we run:

$ svndumpfilter include /abc /def # pseudo command

our subrepo will consist of:

/abc
  some content
/def
  some content

but if we run:

$ svndumpfilter exclude /abc # pseudo command

our subrepo will consist of:

/def
  some content
/ghi
  some content
/jkl
  some content

I wrote pseudo command, since you have to stream the original repository first, so that svndumpfilter can filter its content. Real commands would look like:

$ svnadmin dump /home/tomasz/svn/original_repo | svndumpfilter include /abc /def --drop-empty-revs --renumber-revs > subrepo.svndump

$ svnadmin dump /home/tomasz/svn/original_repo | svndumpfilter exclude /abc --drop-empty-revs --renumber-revs > subrepo.svndump

Now let's take a look at some svndumpfilter options:

--drop-empty-revs

If filtering causes any revision to be empty (i.e., causes no change to the repository), removes these revisions from the final dump file.

--renumber-revs

Renumbers revisions that remain after filtering.

Thanks to above options, the result repository dump will look as if it always consisted of the chosen parts (no empty commits).