@Thorsten: Thanks for taking the time to respond, I do appreciate it, I should provide more background. I did use tortoise. Then I lost a bunch of source code trying to do a merge probably because I didn't know what I was doing. I started with version 1. Branched for version 2. Enhanced version 1 then merged to version 2 and somehow killed the enhanced version 1. All I could get was old version 1 or new version 2 in effect prohibiting any more enhancements to version 1 (I didn't want to dig through version 2 to find the changes and put them back in version 1 with the release of version 2 so close). I have now completed version 2 and would like to get it under source code control without any code loss. That is why I wished to learn the command line version, it seems knowing how the CLI works will tell me how svn works better than a third party product. Am I right or wrong? Besides the book that I am reading only mentions command line options so it is incompatible with anything else. To top it off, I can get clarifications for the CLI here but the support for the other products stinks. Thanks for the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_resource_locator, however it indicates the problem I was trying to resolve earlier. Wikipedia claims a URL points to a resource on the internet. We don't store our repository on the internet. We store it on our intranet. So either we can't use the command line to import files, which seems unlikely. Or svn uses the term URL differently than Wikipedia, very likely. I have seen numerous instances where different sources use terms differently. What does the svn book (http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn-book.pdf) mean when it uses the term?
Actually I don't need to create a directory, I need to create a repository. Looking at the server now it looks like we have a separate repository for each project with folders such as branches, tags and files stored in the root so we can't use a repository for more than 1 project. Is this incorrect? So it looks like I need to create a repository before the import. I issued "svnadmin create" to make a new repository, and it succeeded but only when issued when the current directory was the repository directory. Actually it appears to succede anywhere, but I doubt the folders it creates are useable if they are not on the server. Import still fails though. See below. @Andy: Thanks for replying, but we do have a proper server set up using VisualSVN Server. But the problem remains. Also I would like to point out that it is not helpful to use a word in its own definition: A URL is always a properly-formed URL. That doesn't tell me much. Care to claify? Realizing I needed a new repository, I issued: svnadmin create iERP85_v2 WORKED!! svn import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" file://Vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2 svn import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" svn://Vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2 svn import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" http://Vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2 All fail with "Could not use external editor to fetch log message; consider setting the $SVN_EDITOR environment variable or using the --message (-m) or --file (-F) options" It appears that the import command has an undocumented required parameter, or something else is wrong, because when I provide the parameter I get different errors. import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" file://Vm006/Repositories/i erp_v2 -m "JPM" svn: E180001: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'file://vm006/Repositories/ierp_v2' svn: E180001: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL svn: E180001: Unable to open repository 'file://vm006/Repositories/ierp_v2' import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" svn://Vm006/Repositories/iE RP85_v2 -m "JPM" svn: E730060: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'svn://vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2' svn: E730060: Can't connect to host 'vm006': A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond. import "g:/code/intuitive projects/projects" http://Vm006/Repositories/i ERP85_v2 -m "JPM" svn: E175002: Unable to connect to a repository at URL 'http://vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2' svn: E175002: OPTIONS of 'http://vm006/Repositories/iERP85_v2': could not connect to server (http://vm006) Thanks again for your time. John Maher