<p>My normal work flow to create a new repository with subversion is to create a new repos, do a checkout of the repos root, create my branches tags and trunk folders and place in the trunk my initial files. Then I do a commit of this "initial import", delete the checked out repos from my hard drive and do a checkout of the trunk. Then I can start working.</p>

<p>However, when dealing with a large import, think hundreds of megs, and off-site version control hosting (http based) this initial import can take quite a while to commit. What's worse, after committing I need to checkout this massive trunk all over again.</p>

<p>Is there a way with subversion to use the local copy of the trunk without doing a checkout all over again of data that is already there?</p>

If you've checked out a single folder, copied your files into it, run
```
svn add
```
and
```
svn commit
```
;  you shouldn't need to delete the files and re-checkout.
Use the files in place: once they've been committed as you describe, they're ready to be worked on.