title: Force an SVN checkout command to overwrite current files
body: <p>I'm adding an existing site to SVN.</p>
  
  <p>The files already exist on the webserver, and now identical copies (- configuration files) exist in the repository.</p>
  
  <p>I want to convert the webserver directory into an SVN working copy, but when I run:</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn checkout http://path.to/svn/repo/httpdocs .
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>svn: Failed to add file '': object of the same name already exists</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>How do I tell SVN to just overwrite those files whose contents are the same?</p>