Clean copies of files in working directory

The following Subversion design decision has been eating at me since I
read about it:

        A @file{base} directory, containing the pristine repository
        versions of the files in the corresponding working directory,
        and their properties.

I'm a bit concerned about quietly adding a 100% disk space penalty on
working directories. I understand the benefit of sending patches from
the client side, but at least for the project I care about here, I
would gladly sacrifice the bandwidth required to fetch pristine copies
of modified files from the repository in order to cut my working
directory sizes in half.

So, can we think about making this optional? From a protocol point of
view, I don't think we need any special allowances for that, but the
client-side design may need some thought in terms of the ability to
generate skeltas without pristine copies (using checksums, perhaps, or
perhaps just mod times) and being willing to fetch pristine copies
when necessary.
Received on Sat Oct 21 14:36:06 2006