SVN no longer writes .svn in all sub-folders?
I recently upgraded my SVN client from 1.6.9 to 1.7.2 and after converting to the new format, I noticed that there is no longer a .svn every sub-folders. For my particular configuration this is not very convenient.
Is there a way to undo this or revert to the old behavior where each subfolder from a CO would have a .svn ?
Answer
Subversion 1.7 features a complete re-write of the working copy metadata management system of Subversion, code named WC-NG. The old system was one of the first parts of Subversion written, and over time had grown difficult to maintain and extend. WC-NG is intended to provide an immediate performance improvement, while also enabling many future feature enhancements.
A key feature of the changes introduced in Subversion 1.7 is the centralization of working copy metadata storage into a single location. Instead of a .svn directory in every directory in the working copy, Subversion 1.7 working copies have just one .svn directory—in the root of the working copy. This directory includes (among other things) an SQLite-backed database which contains all of the metadata Subversion needs for that working copy.
Even though the data is stored in a structured format, the relationships between the data are complex. We highly discourage external tools from modifying the data held in this database, as such modification is likely to result in working copy corruption.