According to the svn book
there is a –depth option to checkout which I wanted to use, however, the book relates to version 1.5 of svn and I only had version 1.4.2.
Here’s how I upgraded it, and maybe you can too.
I use RedHat Enterprise Linux (aka RHEL) 5.2 (Tikanga), but these instructions apply to other versions of RHEL, CentOS and probably other RedHat-based linux distros as well.
[craig@localhost ~]$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.2 (Tikanga)
[craig@localhost ~]$ svn --version
svn, version 1.4.2 (r22196)
compiled Nov 20 2006, 07:17:37
First you need to download the packages (rpms) from SummerSoft
. Go into the rhel5 folder, then i386. Download neon-0.27.2-1.i386.rpm and subversion-1.5.5-1.i386.rpm, or whatever version is there now.
Go to the download location using a terminal and type (replace your file version as needed):
[craig@localhost svn-rpms]$ sudo rpm -i neon-0.27.2-1.i386.rpm
Password:
[craig@localhost svn-rpms]$ sudo rpm -U subversion-1.5.5-1.i386.rpm
[craig@localhost svn-rpms]$ svn --version
svn, version 1.5.5 (r34862)
compiled Dec 21 2008, 13:58:57
[craig@localhost svn-rpms]$ svn help co
checkout (co): Check out a working copy from a repository.
usage: checkout URL[@REV]... [PATH]
...
Valid options:
...
--depth ARG : limit operation by depth ARG ('empty', 'files',
'immediates', or 'infinity')
[craig@localhost ~]$ svn co --depth files https://svn.example.com/project/
A project/file1
A project/file2
[craig@localhost ~]$
If you want a newer version then try the numbered folders at SummerSoft, or other providers of subversion binary packages CollabNet 
and WANdisco
.
