How can I permanently remove files from my Subversion repository?
How SVN stores versioned files
Subversion uses binary differencing algorithms and data compression to store your versioned history. This makes permanently removing files from your repository difficult. Subversion was designed to never lose information. In this light, we recommend that you do not permanently remove files from your repository unless absolutely necessary.
How to Remove files from your SVN repository — forever
While Subversion does not have a command for this, you can use the
svndumpfilter tool to accomplish it.
First you need to
export your Beanstalk repository as an SVN dump. You can accomplish this by going to the Settings > Export section in your repository page.
The next step is to process the dump by the
svndumpfilter utility (which comes bundled with Subversion) on your local computer.
Most likely the command will look like this:
svndumpfilter exclude file_name_needs_to_be_removed.txt --drop-empty-revs --renumber-revs < source.dump > result.dump
Once you have completed the clean up, you would have to import the dump file back into Beanstalk as a new repository. You would also delete the original that is taking up more space than desired.
References:
How to remove files from your SVN repository - SVN Book Read Bean