<p><strong>"It is not possible to check out a single file. The finest level of checkouts you can do is at the directory level."</strong></p>

<p>How do I get around this issue when using Subversion?</p>

<p>We have this folder in Subversion where we keep all our images. I just want to check out one file (image) from that. This folder is really big and has ton of other stuff which I don't need now.</p>

Use
```
svn cat
```
or
```
svn export
```
.
For that, you don't need to fetch the working directory, but you will not be able to commit any changes you make. If you need to make changes and commit them, you need a working directory, but you don't have to fetch it completely. Checkout the revision where the directory was still/almost empty, and then use 'svn cat' to extract the file from HEAD.