RE: faster new-project-to-working-copy method?

This is what we do where I work...

1. If the target folder doesn't already exist in the repository, create it via the repo-browser or command line first.

2. Check out the (preferably empty) target trunk folder into the folder to be imported

3. Add the contents to version control

4. Commit the newly populated folder.

--
Phil
From: Chris Calef [mailto:chris.calef_at_gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2008 11:01 AM
To: users_at_tortoisesvn.tigris.org
Subject: faster new-project-to-working-copy method?
Hi svn users list,
Apologies if this has been asked a million times, I couldn't find it in the archives... anyway, I've been using Tortoise SVN for years, and the one thing that has always frustrated the heck out of me is the fact that there is apparently no way around having to import a project to a repository (upload) and then check it out again (download) to get a usable working copy.
I know that's standard SVN protocol, or at least the way I've always done it, but with large projects, even on a decent connection, uploading all that data and then having to sit and wait to _download_ all the same files again just to get the svn info overlaid on it seems painfully inefficient.  If I was TortoiseSVN and I was writing such a fancy, easy, all-around incredibly useful SVN client, I would think I would have addressed this issue by making a special checkout-to-existing-copy function that checked for the existence of files before downloading them, and only copied the .svn directories down.
So what's up, svn users, has that been there the whole time and I just neglected to RTFM?  Or is there some critical SVN reason why it wouldn't work? Or is it on the list to go in the next version?
Thanks,
Chris Calef
Eugene, OR