Can I migrate remote SVN to local disk without exporting dmp files on remote server?

Question

So far I migrated SVN repositories by going to remote server (Unfuddle or similar), dumping the repository into .dmp file and the loading it into my local SVN via svnadmin load command.

Now, since I have most files (current version of each file) already checked out on my hard disk, and since this project is rather large, can I skip dumping the repository remotely and issue migration command from my checkout folder to my local SVN?

For example, instead of dumping the repository into a large DMP file, can I do something like this:

1. go to local checked out svn repository
2. issue some command probably to svnadmin
3. svn admin connects to a remote SVN and those file which are the current one and which are in the local folder simply copy from one disk to another, and only download files which are NOT in the local checkout.

Is this a SF or a reality?

Answer 1

You cannot load a repository from your working copy as it doesn't have the revision history.

As TridenT noted, you can dump the revisions from the "remote" repository that have been committed since the previous dump operation, then load those into your local copy.

Another option would be to use svnsync to push all changes committed to the remote repository back to your local one.

Answer 2

You can dump only latest revision range with the -r switch.

svnadmin dump REPOS_PATH [-r LOWER[:UPPER]] [--incremental] [--deltas]

and then you can load this increment in the new repository.

Reference:
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.ref.svnadmin.c.dump.html

Example:
http://www.vioan.ro/wp/2007/07/31/dumprestore-for-subversion-repository/