Using Subversion Branches and Externals

If you have been following my twitter feeds lately you already know that I've been trying to figure out some subversion stuff for a current project I have to come up with some process around using subversion. Well, I'm a real newbie at this and Google was only slightly helpful. Well, I think I learned what I set out to learn and I thought I would post my findings here.

References:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/archives/2006/06/06/short-tutorial-on-svn-propset-for-svnexternals-property/
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch07s04.html
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch04.html

Creating a Branch:
syntax: svn copy source target
example to copy from trunk to current directory:
svn copy svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored/MY_STORED_PROC.sql .

Merging changes:
syntax: svn merge svn://original_path_to_file -r[Original Version]:[Version to Merge] /new_file_path
example:
svn merge svn://localhost/branches/DW/RIM_1.4/MY_STORED_PROC.sql -r1:2 ./MY_STORED_PROC.sql

Creating Externals:
Notes:
Externals can only be created on directories, not individual files.
Externals provide an alias to a directory within subversion
Creating externals involves setting a property on a subversion directory.
To create a directory that has subdirectories that are externals:
1. Create a file with the alias definitions. The contents of the files should be like this:
alias_directory_name path_in_subversion
for example
$ cat alias_def.txt
stored_proc svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored

You can create multiple subdirectories with multiple entries. For example
$cat alias_def.txt
stored_proc svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Stored
tables svn://localhost/trunk/DW/RIM/RIM/Tables

Once the definition file has been created, it can be applied using the svn propset command to a working subversion directory using the following commands:
svn propset svn:externals . -F alias_def.txt
svn update

These commands will create the directories "stored_proc" and "tables" with the appropriate contents as defined in alias_dev.txt in the current working subversion directory.