How to identify and potentially remove big binary commits inside an SVN repository?

I am working with an SVN repository that is over 3 years old, contains over 6,100 commits and is over 1.5 GB in size. I want to reduce the size of the SVN repository (I'm not talking about the size of a full SVN export - I mean the full repository as it would exist on the server) before moving it to a new server.

The current repository contains the source code for all of our software projects but it also contains relatively large binary files of no significance such as:

• Full installers for a number of 3rd party tools.
• .jpg & .png files (which are unmodified exports of PSDs that live in the same folder).
• Bin and Obj folders (which are then 'svn ignored' the next commit).
• Resharper directories.

A number of these large files have been 'SVN deleted' since they were added, creating a further problem of identifing the biggest offenders.

I want to either:

• Create a new SVN repository that contains only the code for all of the software projects - it is really important that the copied files maintain their SVN history from the old repository.
• Remove the large binary commits and files from the existing repository.

Are either of these possible?

You will have to use svnadmin dump to get a dump file of your current repository and possibly svndumpfilter to process the dump file. You can also manually modify the dumpfile as long as you're carefull.

It's probably not going to be a quick and easy job, but it can be done. I've done something similar, only to a much smaller repository. I had a repo with about 150 revisions that took about 600MB.

Make a dump from your current repository, make the necessary changes and try to load the modified dumpfile in a new repository. Then check the new repository to make sure everything is still making sense (History is still correct, no weird changes in paths, ...).