The svn import command is a quick way to copy an unversioned tree of files into a repository, creating intermediate directories as necessary. svn import doesn't require a working copy, and your files are immediately committed to the repository. This is typically used when you have an existing tree of files that you want to begin tracking in your Subversion repository. For example:

$ svnadmin create /var/svn/newrepos
$ svn import mytree file:///var/svn/newrepos/some/project \
             -m "Initial import"
Adding         mytree/foo.c
Adding         mytree/bar.c
Adding         mytree/subdir
Adding         mytree/subdir/quux.h

Committed revision 1.

The previous example copied the contents of directory mytree under the directory some/project in the repository:

$ svn list file:///var/svn/newrepos/some/project
bar.c
foo.c
subdir/

Note that after the import is finished, the original tree is not converted into a working copy. To start working, you still need to svn checkout a fresh working copy of the tree.