To create an initial SVN checkout from a SVN repository on your Ubuntu machine via the terminal is a pretty simple affair thanks to the pretty standard svn checkout call.
To checkout, enter:
svn checkout https://svn.server:port/svn/project/trunk /home/projectdir
(Obviously you would swap out all the relevant details to match your SVN structure)
You’ll first be asked to accept the SVN server’s key, then for the SVN authentication details, and that is that. SVN will now pull down the necessary files while you go and make yourself a lovely cup of tea.
Note the specifying of a target folder in our call above though. If you omit this, SVN will create the checkout in the current working directory, but it will create a new folder based on the SVN terminating folder to store it in. In other words, if you are checking out from …/branches/version-1.2.0 and you are currently in /home then SVN will create the checkout in /home/version-1.2.0 – you have been warned.
Nifty.