Do svn:externals changes need to be committed to work?

I am trying to add an svn:externals definition to a working copy. I set the
property on a directory and ran svn update on that directory, but nothing is
fetched.

I found this article:
http://blogs.gnome.org/johannes/2008/02/20/svnexternals-for-noobs/
However, from other documentation it's unclear to me if a commit is really
necessary for svn:external to work. Of course, I don't want to commit an
untested external definition.

I am using TortoiseSVN 1.6.15 built with Subversion 1.6.16.
Received on 2011-08-02 08:37:45 CEST