cd ~/blog.bigsmoke.us/wp-content/plugins
diff --unified  --recursive --exclude=.svn --new-file simple-tags new-simple-tags >st-up.diff
cd simple-tags
patch -p1 --remove-empty-files < ../st-up.diff
svn status|sed -e '/^\!/!d; s/^\!//'|xargs svn del
svn add inc

I noticed that this still left a lot of old files hanging around, the same problem as I’ve had the previously with this method. Also, some files wouldn’t get patched. Instead of being mystified by this failure again, I realized that diff and patch simply can’t deal with binary files (beyond reporting whether they differ or not).

Now I’m writing a simple script to use for future updates of this type. It’s not that I need to be able to save space by storing just the differences or anything fancy like that. It’s just that I can’t replace the contents of the old directory with those of the new version, because Subversion insists on keeping those annoying .svn subdirs everywhere in your working copy.