Checkout one file from Subversion

The simple answer is that you svn export the file instead of checking it out.

But that might not be what you want. You might want to work on the file and check it back in, without having to download GB of junk you don't need.

If you have Subversion 1.5+, then do a sparse checkout:

svn checkout <url_of_big_dir> <target> --depth empty
cd <target>
svn up <file_you_want>

For an older version of SVN, you might benefit from the following:

• Checkout the directory using a revision back in the distant past, when it was less full of junk you don't need.
• Update the file you want, to create a mixed revision. This works even if the file didn't exist in the revision you checked out.
• Profit!

An alternative (for instance if the directory has too much junk right from the revision in which it was created) is to do a URL->URL copy of the file you want into a new place in the repository (effectively this is a working branch of the file). Check out that directory and do your modifications.

I'm not sure whether you can then merge your modified copy back entirely in the repository without a working copy of the target - I've never needed to. If so then do that.

If not then unfortunately you may have to find someone else who does have the whole directory checked out and get them to do it. Or maybe by the time you've made your modifications, the rest of it will have finished downloading...

Try svn export instead of svn checkout. That works for single files.

The reason for the limitation is that checkout creates a working copy, that contains meta-information about repository, revision, attributes, etc. That metadata is stored in subdirectories named '.svn'. And single files don't have subdirectories.

Use svn cat or svn export.

For that, you don't need to fetch the working directory, but you will not be able to commit any changes you make. If you need to make changes and commit them, you need a working directory, but you don't have to fetch it completely. Checkout the revision where the directory was still/almost empty, and then use 'svn cat' to extract the file from HEAD.

If you want to view readme.txt in your repository without checking it out:

$ svn cat http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/test/readme.txt
This is a README file. You should read this.

Tip: If your working copy is out of date (or you have local modifications) and you want to see the HEAD revision of a file in your working copy, svn cat will automatically fetch the HEAD revision when you give it a path:

$ cat foo.c
This file is in my local working copy and has changes that I've made.

$ svn cat foo.c
Latest revision fresh from the repository!

Source

cd C:\path\dir
svn checkout https://server/path/to/trunk/dir/dir/parent_dir--depth empty
cd C:\path\dir\parent_dir
svn update filename.log

(Edit filename.log)

svn commit -m "this is a comment."

I'd just browse it and export the single file. If you have HTTP access, just use the web browser to find the file and grab it.

If you need to get it back in after editing it, that might be slightly more tedious, but I'm sure there might be an svn import function...

Go to the repo-browser right-click the file and use 'Save As', I'm using TortoiseSVN though.

If you just want a file without revision information use

svn export <URL>

With Subversion 1.5, it becomes possible to check out (all) the files of a directory without checking out any subdirectories (the various --depth flags). Not quite what you asked for, but a form of "less than all."

Using the sparse check out technique, you CAN check out a particular file that is already checked out or exists...with a simple trick:

After checkout of the top level of your repository using the 'this item only' option, in Windows explorer, you MUST first right-click on the file you need to update; choose Repo Browser in context menu; find that file AGAIN in repository browser, and right-click. You should now see the "update item to revision" in context menu.

I'm not sure whether it is an undocumented feature or simply a bug. It took me an extended after-work hours to finally find this trick. I'm using TortoiseSVN 1.6.2.

This issue is covered by issue #823 "svn checkout a single file" originally reported July 27, 2002 by Eric Gillespie [1].

There is a Perl script attached [2] that lets you check out a single file from svn, make changes, and commit the changes back to the repository, but you can't run "svn up" to checkout the rest of the directory. It's been tested with svn-1.3, 1.4 and 1.6.

Note the Subversion project originally hosted on tigris.org got moved to apache.org. The original URL of issue # 823 was on tigris.org at this non defunct URL [3]. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine has a copy of this original link [4].

1 - https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/SVN-823?issueNumber=823

2 - https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/attachment/12762717/2_svn-co-one-file.txt

3 - http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=823

4 - https://web.archive.org/web/20170401115732/http://subversion.tigris.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=823