After deciding how to arrange the projects in your repository, you'll probably want to actually populate the repository with that layout and with initial project data. There are a couple of ways to do this in Subversion. You could use the svn mkdir command (see Chapter 9, Subversion Complete Reference ) to create each directory in your skeletal repository layout, one-by-one. A quicker way to accomplish the same task is to use the svn import command (see the section called “ svn import ”). By first creating the layout in a temporary location on your drive, you can import the whole layout tree into the repository in a single commit:

$ mkdir tmpdir
$ cd tmpdir
$ mkdir projectA
$ mkdir projectA/trunk
$ mkdir projectA/branches
$ mkdir projectA/tags
$ mkdir projectB
$ mkdir projectB/trunk
$ mkdir projectB/branches
$ mkdir projectB/tags
…
$ svn import . file:///path/to/repos --message 'Initial repository layout'
Adding         projectA
Adding         projectA/trunk
Adding         projectA/branches
Adding         projectA/tags
Adding         projectB
Adding         projectB/trunk
Adding         projectB/branches
Adding         projectB/tags
…
Committed revision 1.
$ cd ..
$ rm -rf tmpdir
$

You can verify the results of the import by running the svn list command:

$ svn list --verbose file:///path/to/repos
      1 harry               May 08 21:48 projectA/
      1 harry               May 08 21:48 projectB/
…
$

Once you have your skeletal layout in place, you can begin importing actual project data into your repository, if any such data exists yet. Once again, there are several ways to do this. You could use the svn import command. You could checkout a working copy from your new repository, move and arrange project data inside the working copy, and use the svn add and svn commit commands. But once we start talking about such things, we're no longer discussing repository administration. If you aren't already familiar with the svn client program, see Chapter 3, Guided Tour .