Repositories are also fast and small. Fast because every clone is a local copy of the complete repository with all commits and branches. Small because of the

Repositories are also fast and small. Fast because every clone is a local copy of the complete repository with all commits and branches. Small because of the way it stores it's diffs. Subversion tends to be really slow when doing branching, merging and getting commit logs because it always needs to communicate with the remote server to transfer files and data. Subversion checkouts seem to be really huge because it will have a version of the latest head and a version of what you are currently working on.