Union of Multiple Branches

[Mattius McLaughlin]

Hi All,

 I understand this is not common workflow, but I'd like to know if 
there is a simple way to accomplish this goal before I start scripting a 
solution.

 Some background: one of the requirements for my organization moving to 
subversion was the ability to create tags/branches that contain a subset 
of files on the trunk.  We accomplish this by creating the tag/branch, 
and svn rm'ing any files that aren't required until we've arrived at the 
desired fileset.  We work with very large files and need to use subsets 
of files to avoid lots of disk usage/network traffic.

 Some users have asked if it is possible to check out multiple tags 
into the same workspace.  That is, if we have tag a and tag b with files 
independent of one another but common directories, is it possible to 
check out a workspace that is an amalgamation of tag a and tag b.  Merge 
doesn't get me what I need because the merge replays all of the file 
deletes that were used to generate a subset tag.

 So my question is: is there a way to get two branches/tags to live in 
the same workspace?

Thanks,
--Mattius