Discussion
The checkout command is used to copy a set of resources from a repository to your local file system, creating a Working Copy where you can make your changes and then commit those changes back to the repository. Until you commit the changes in your Working Copy to the repository, no one else will be able to see them.

General Form

You must supply a URL argument to tell Subversion what you want to check out from the repository. By default the checkout command acts recursively and checks out everything under that URL, including sub-directories. Also by default, the checkout command will check out the latest revision of each object under that URL.

It is not necessary to supply a PATH argument; the last directory name in the URL will be used to create new sub-directory under the current local directory and the results of the checkout will be placed in that sub-directory.

If you do supply a PATH argument everything under the URL will be placed in that directory. The PATH does not need to exist before executing the checkout command.

Example Usage 1
Checkout the trunk of the exampleproject project from the repository, and create the local Working Copy inside of a sub-directory of the current directory called trunk:

Example Usage 2
Checkout a branch of the exampleproject project, and create the local Working Copy inside of a sub-directory called bugfixes-1.0.x :

Example Usage 3
Checkout all of the resources under the trunk of the exampleproject project as they were in revision 22: