SVN checkout or export for production environment?

Question

In a project I am working on, we have an ongoing discussion amongst the dev team - should the production environment be deployed as a checkout from the SVN repository or as

Answer 1

I've been struggling with this, and I think I finally decided on checkout. Yes, there is extra junk there, but...

• Export doesn't account for deleted files (unless your solution is to delete everything in the dir and THEN export, which I think is way worse). Checkout will remove deleted files.
• Checkout is faster. Period. Fewer files being updated means less down/transition time, and an export pulls down and overwrites EVERYTHING, not just files needing an update.

Not saying it'll work for everyone, but these two things influenced my decision. Best of luck with your decision.