Can we set a single file as external in Subversion?

Question

Can we set a single file as external in Subversion?

Answer 1

As mentioned in the first answer, SVN Externals are documented in Chapter 3 of the SVN Book, and quite a few syntax examples are given there.

In addition, this note is given:

"Because the svn:externals property has a multiline value, we strongly recommend that you use svn propedit instead of svn propset."

In my experience testing Tortoise SVN v1.9.6 and svn.exe v1.9.5, the results are as-documented.

• Bringing in an external folder with all its files works.
• Bringing in a single file from the same repo works.
• Bringing in a single file from a different repo fails and this limitation is documented in the SVN book.

This leads to a clumsy workaround. If you control both repos, you can clone an individual file into its own folder in the source repo (by Externals of a single file WITHIN a repo), and then Externals it across repo borders into the target repo by bringing in its entire folder, which contains only a single file.

Docs for doing this with the Tortoise SVN client are on tortoisesvn.net.