title: Correct way of importing a project in SVN?
body: <p>I have a question regarding how to importing a project into a Subversion repository. I found a lot of answers by googling, but I could not understand the logic behind it.</p>
  
  <p>The steps I understand is:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Create a project directory with three sub-directories: branches, tags and trunk.</p></li>
  <li><p>Place all code under trunk.</p></li>
  <li><p>Run the command:</p>
  
  <p><code>svn import project_dir file:///repository_name/project -m "First Import"</code></p>
  
  <p>where the project_dir contains the three sub-directories.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>After this, I need to check my code out again to another directory:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p><code>svn checkout file:///repository_name/project/trunk new_project_dir</code></p></li>
  <li><p>Continue working on the new_project_dir.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>It seems to me that we create the project_dir for use only once and ignore it.</p>
  
  <p>My questions are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>After I checkout the code into new_project_dir, is the old project_dir still useful? Or it is simply just to give SVN the layout?</p></li>
  <li><p>Do we ever need to work on the two other sub-directories: branches and tags on our own (e.g. checkout the contents in there)? or it is simply for SVN internal use? If it is for SVN internal use, why can't SVN create it automatically for us?</p></li>
  </ol>