-----Original Message----- From: boost-bounces@lists.boost.org on behalf of Peter Dimov So I've made the mistake of checking out https://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/ This is somewhat excessive. :-) How do people manage to keep their working copy reasonably small while still keeping an eye on non-trunk parts and a branch or two as needed? -----End Original Message----- Peter, If you don't need to work on different branches too often, then svn switch can help in multiple ways. One way is that you only have one working copy. In terms of speed, on a large repository (30k+ files), it takes about 2-3 minutes to switch, Also, as svn switch will only touch files that are different between the branches. you will only rebuild what is different so you more than make up for the 2-3 minutes switching time in time spent *not* building**. HTH, Sohail ** Unless one of the common diffs is a common header file.