Only update SVN branch folders during SVN update

Question

Suppose you have this SVN structure:

\app
\app\trunk\
\app\trunk\file1
\app\trunk\file2
\app\branches\
\app\branches\branch1\file1
\app\branches\branch2\file1
\app\branches\branch2\file2
\app\tags\

Suppose we created two new branches for two deployments/releases of our application. Over time, the files under these branches will increase the used space of our local machine where Tortoise SVN is installed. Is there a way to configure Tortoise so when we do an "SVN Update" on the "branches" folder, we just get the first level, meaning we just bring the "branch1" and "branch2" folders onto our local machine, and not the contents (ie: "file1", "file2")? And then use another SVN command to pull files for specific branch folders?

EDIT:

To elaborate a little on this, we have random files for specific tasks, that are more related to the migration/deployment, such as business requirements, testing plans, testing scripts, testing validation output. We don't want these files getting mixed into the rest of the source code because they are only relevant for the development of that branch. But we still want to track them. They will definitely increase the disk space.

Answer 1

Typically one wouldn't check out the branches folder... you'd check out one of the branches, if you needed a different branch you'd either do an svn switch in that working copy or check it out the second branch in it's own workspace.

Perhaps you could expound on what you're trying to do?

To answer your question it is possible to checkout just a directories immediate children with svn co --depth immediates http://svn.company.com/repo/branches But this would be a pretty non-standard thing... I'm not sure why one would do this, I'm curious.