Rsync, subversion and directories

[Andrew Crouch]

Hi all,
        I'm attempting to build a backup system using rsync and subversion.

I have a samba share which I would like to replicate via rsync.  The
replicated copy is under subversion control to store a 'history'. 
This appears to work well until a directory is removed on the primary
(non-backup) file system.

The rsync command which I assumed would do the job:
$ rsyc -zrv --delete --force --exclude=".svn" SRC DEST

Since the destination folders are under subversion control, each
folder has a ".svn" folder holding the versioning information.  I
would prefer these not be deleted each time rsync ran, hence the
--exclude=".svn" flag.  However, when a folder is removed on the
source machine I would like that folder to disappear on the
destination machine, ".svn" subdirectory and all.  Reading the short
description of "--force", it appears this flag should do the trick -
further investigation reveals this is not quite so.

Furthermore, the output of the "-v" flag doesn't imply that the
directory can be deleted, except when doing a dry run:

$ rsync -rvz --delete --exclude=".svn" --dry-run  ~/TestA ~/testme/TestB
building file list ... done
deleting TestA/TEST/     <-------
TestA/blerg.txt
TestA/file with space.txt
TestA/file2.txt
TestA/sync.sh

$ rsync -rvz --delete --exclude=".svn" ~/TestA ~/testme/TestB
building file list ... done
TestA/blerg.txt
TestA/file with space.txt
TestA/file2.txt
TestA/sync.sh

I was wondering, short of moving the subversion server to the source
machine, or running rsync twice and doing some output matching, how
this might be accomplished?

Cheers,
Andrew