How to do a sparse checkout and update from SVN on Jenkins? - jenkins

Question

We have a large SVN repository and I would like to do a sparse checkout on Jenkins. I do understand the concept of sparse checkouts and having it locally I can get things to work as I would like to have it. Doing things on Jenkins however and running it repeatedly I can't get to work.
I have a repo structure as follows
trunk\file.txt
trunk\FolderA
trunk\FolderB
trunk\FolderC
trunk\FolderD
I would like to checkout and update
trunk\file.txt
trunk\FolderA
trunk\FolderB
but NOT
trunk\FolderC
trunk\FolderD
My pipeline code is as follows
checkout([$class: 'SubversionSCM',
additionalCredentials: [[credentialsId: strCredentialsId, realm: strRealm]],
excludedCommitMessages: '',
excludedRegions: '',
excludedRevprop: '',
excludedUsers: '', filterChangelog: false,
ignoreDirPropChanges: false,
includedRegions: '',
locations: [
[
remote: "${strRepoPath}/trunk",
local: "${softwarePath}",
depthOption: 'unknown',
credentialsId: strCredentialsId,
cancelProcessOnExternalsFail: true,
ignoreExternalsOption: false
],
[
remote: "${strRepoPath}/trunk/FolderA",
local: "${softwarePath}/FolderA",
depthOption: 'infinity',
credentialsId: strCredentialsId,
cancelProcessOnExternalsFail: true,
ignoreExternalsOption: false
],
[
remote: "${strRepoPath}/trunk/FolderB",
local: "${softwarePath}/FolderB",
depthOption: 'infinity',
credentialsId: strCredentialsId,
cancelProcessOnExternalsFail: true,
ignoreExternalsOption: false
]
],
quietOperation: false,
workspaceUpdater: [$class: 'UpdateWithCleanUpdater']])
Whenever I run this code the first time, everything looks as expected. However, when Jenkins runs it the following times, the UpdateWithCleanUpdater causes that FolderA and FolderB get first deleted and then checked out again. The result is still correct, however, it takes much longer that I would like it to take and longer than necessary.
I would like to keep the UpdateWithCleanUpdater because I want Jenkins to clean up files generated in the previous run.
Is there any solution to this using the Jenkins SVN plugin? How would I do this "manually", i.e. do a checkout the first time, clean up and only update the following times, and still do automatic Jenkins runs based on change detection on the SVN repo?
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Now that is a very narrow issue.
I'd say, either you replace the UpdateWithCleanUpdater with a manual script (by calling your local svn client; some examples here); or you could fork or contribute to the Jenkins SVN plugin.

Answer 2

On the trunk you have:
depthOption: 'unknown',
Shouldn't the value be 'empty'?
Yet, while what that might avoid the "FolderA and FolderB get first deleted and then checked out again", so I doubt that you would really get the "sparse checkout" in this way. It will be rather a "normal checkout into another SVN workspace".
As a workaround you can consider using svn:externals: Create a folder trunk/JenkinsWorkspace/trunk, and set svn:externals property with a content like:
^/trunk/FolderA FolderA
^/trunk/FolderB FolderB
^/trunk/file.txt file.txt
Then, in Jenkins you would just have a single checkout from ${strRepoPath}/JenkinsWorkspace.