We seem to have given switch a new ability in 1.7, it's possible to switch a unversioned path:
svnadmin create repo svn mkdir -mm file://`pwd`/repo/A svn co file://`pwd`/repo wc svn sw file://`pwd`/repo/A wc/X Now I see: svn st wc S wc/X and sqlite wc/.svn/wc.db "select * from nodes" 1|A|0||1|A|1|normal|||dir|()|infinity|||1|1289910810354827|pm|||| 1||0||1||1|normal|||dir|()|infinity|||1|1289910810354827|pm|||| 1|X|0||1|A|1|normal|||dir|()|infinity|||1|1289910810354827|pm|||| In 1.6 the switch fails with an error that wc/X was not versioned. It is possible to make 1.6 do the switch: svn mkdir -mm file://`pwd`/repo/X svn co file://`pwd`/repo wc svn sw file://`pwd`/repo/A wc/X svn up -r1 wc That results in a similar working copy to the one obtained by switching a non-versioned node. Is this something that we should be supporting? Perhaps we should get rid of the externals code and use this instead? Yes, it appears to work for files. -- Philip