SVK provides a facility for making mirrors of Subversion repositories.
The easiest way to install SVK is
apt-get install svk
for Debian. It's available as a CPAN module (with its own dependencies), but note that it needs the perl bindings to subversion, which are not available by default.
Here are some quick commands to get you started (set up the SSL certificate if you haven't already done so, see Subversion):
svk depotmap --init # Respond Y to the question svk mirror https://urchin.earth.li/svn/openguides/trunk //openguides/trunk svk sync //openguides/trunk svk mkdir -m "Local branches" //local svk cp -m "Local OpenGuides" //openguides/trunk //local/openguides
Now, when you want to start making changes, check out of your local branch:
svk co //local/openguides
You now have a working copy in ./openguides; most svn commands will work, but remember to use svk instead of svn. There's also a complete lack of hidden .svn directories and other nasties that can get in the way - nice! You can also work completely offline at this point, checking into your local branch.
If other changes have happened in the trunk, use svk pull. When you are ready to commit, use svk push.
