diffing from a url to a modified wc ?

I'm trying to gain acceptance for vendor branching within my
organization, so I'm forging ahead and trying to teach by example. My
usage scenario is that I have a copy of netpipe 3.6.1 branched into our
codebase with crazy build system changes in it. So now I've imported
3.6.2 using svn_load_dirs, and I'm merging 3.6.1 3.6.2 into my local wc.

My goal is to diff from my merged but uncommitted wc to the pristine
version I'm merging us up to. This will allow me to ensure that the diff
from upstream is free of cruft.

I can't get the desired results with svn diff:

~/ef/netpipe% svn diff $r/external/netpipe/3.6.2 .
svn: A path under version control is needed for this operation

Reversing the arguments produces a diff, but not the diff I think I'm
asking for. It'll give me the diff of the uncommitted changes in my wc,
then whine about the path under version control being needed like above.

I also tried svn switching to the pristine source hoping most of the
local mods would merge okay, and knowing that I could revert, switch
bach, and merge again. That blew up on file adds:

~/ef/netpipe% svn sw $r/external/netpipe/3.6.2
G src/netpipe.c
G src/tcp.c
G src/mpi2.c
G src/netpipe.h
G src/ib.c
G src/armci.c
D src/netpipe.c.orig
D src/ib.c.orig
svn: Failed to add file 'dox/netpipe.1': object of the same name already
exists

The only way I can come up with is to svn export both (since export will
export a modified wc), then do an old school diff on the trees. This is
workable, but inconvenient.

To sum it all up: is there another way to get svn diff to give me a diff
between a modified wc and a URL?

-- 
Adam Lazur, Cluster Monkey
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