feature request: checkout repositories partially

Hello,

I am using the following CVS feature that is not possible with SVN
without hand editing some files. (At least I don't know how.)

Assume you have a repository with the following structure:

project/
    Makefile
    Rules.make
    a/
        [many files and subdirs]
    b/
        [many files and subdirs]
    c/
        [many files and subdirs]

Further assume, c/ includes some stuff that has to be kept private,
e.g. rsa keys, and so shouldn't be checked out on clients that are
publicly accessible.

With CVS I do:

# CVSROOT=server:/path/to/repos export
# cvs co files/{Makefile,Rules.make,a,b}

Now I have all what I need, but prevent checkout of c/.

The drawback with cvs is that you never should run "cvs update -d"
from the project/ dir, but I can live with that.

With SVN this seems not to be possible.

I tried:

# svn co -N https://server/repos

I wanted to add subdirs later, but I didn't find a possibility to do
so.

It would be nice to be able to just do a

# svn co a
# svn co b

Without an absolute URL this should mean, add this subdir from the
server to the client workspace.

What do you think about that idea?

Robert

-- 
Robert Schiele			Tel.: +49-621-181-2517
Dipl.-Wirtsch.informatiker	mailto:rschiele@uni-mannheim.de