title: Removing SVN Revisions
body: <p>I know, that this topic is already well documented <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/747713/subversion-retract-accidental-checkin">here</a>. But I couldn't find the right answer.</p>
  
  <p>Some years ago our boss said to a colleague, that he have to put <em>ALL</em> into the SVN. He did it several times and in sum round about <strong>7.2 Gigs</strong>. This is now completely outdated and it have to be removed from the SVN. Notice: <strong>All the revisions are in a one SVN directory tree</strong> and all documents in this directory tree should be deleted.</p>
  
  <p><strong>I already know that a revision can't be removed, but 7.2Gigs are to much backupspace for an outdated business unit.</strong></p>
  
  <pre><code>root: svn://192.168.123.123/
  delete: svn://192.168.123.123/OUTDATED_DIR_TREE 
  hold: svn://192.168.123.123/java
  hold: svn://192.168.123.123/cpp
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Is it possible to export the java and cpp path into a new installation (with new revisions if needed) and <strong>hold the comments and version tags</strong>?</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>svn, version 1.5.2 (r32768)
    compiled Feb 25 2009, 16:12:21</p>
    
    <p>Copyright (C) 2000-2008 CollabNet.
    Subversion is open source software, see <a href="http://subversion.tigris.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://subversion.tigris.org/</a>
    This product includes software developed by CollabNet (<a href="http://www.Collab.Net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.Collab.Net/</a>).</p>
  </blockquote>