To obtain a working copy you need to do a checkout from a repository.
Select a directory in windows explorer where you want to place your working copy. Right click to pop up the context menu and select the command → , which brings up the following dialog box:
If you enter a folder name that does not yet exist, then a directory with that name is created.
Important
You should only check out into an empty directory. If you want to check out your source tree into the same directory that you imported from, Subversion will throw an error message because it will not overwrite the existing unversioned files with versioned ones. You will have to check out into a different directory or delete the existing sourcetree first.
If you want to check out the top level folder only and omit all sub-folders, use the Only check out the top folder checkbox.
If the project contains references to external projects which you do not want checked out at the same time, use the Omit externals checkbox.
Important
If either of these options are checked, you will have to perform updates to your working copy using → instead of → . The standard update will include all sub-folders and all externals.
It is recommended that you check out only the trunk part of the
directory tree. If you specify the parent path of the
directory tree in the URL then you might end up with a full
hard disk since you will get a copy of the entire repository tree
including every branch and tag of your project!
Exporting
Sometimes you may want a copy without any of those
.svn directories, e.g. to create a zipped
tarball of your source. Instead of making a copy and then delete
all those .svn directories manually,
TortoiseSVN offers the command
→ .
If you execute this command
on your working copy you'll be asked for a place to save the
clean working copy without the
.svn
folders. Also, you can specify if you want to export
all files or just the versioned files.
Another way to do an export is by right-dragging a working copy folder to another location and choose → or →