SVN update command to target a single externals subfolder?

Question

I have a bunch of externals directories in a plugins folder.

~> svn propedit svn:externals .

akismet http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/akismet/trunk/
stats http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/stats/tags/1.3.7/
html-purified http://svn.wp-plugins.org/html-purified/trunk/

Some times I will update a single externals reference to update the version number from say 1.3.7 to 1.3.8 but I am forced to issue an svn up command to the whole folder and simply svn up stats doesn't work, instead it returns something like:

At revision 108437.

Instead of updating the folder from an external repository. Is it possible to update a single external sub-folder?

Answer 1

No, because this is a single property on the parent folder, defining these externals references for each of the "virtual" subfolders. The actual subfolders don't exist in Subversion's eyes.

Answer 2

You could switch the external to the new version if you want to avoid the 'svn up' on the parent folder. First change the svn:externals property to the new tag, commit. Then

svn switch http://plugins.svn.wordpress.org/stats/tags/1.3.8/ stats 

But of course, updating the parent folder is recommended.