Yes, typically there are multiple ways to solve problems; often I find new ways much later when I’m looking for something else.

I don’t find svn’s working copy overhead a big problem for code, especially given the size of modern disk drives. But there are at least two projects that work with svn to eliminate the local working copy (e.g. scord and fsvs (backup oriented)

Oh, and I ran across scord and fsvs here when I was looking at using a VCS for managing for photos.

Another way to deal with this problem (I have experienced it as well — need to use less disk space for code folders) is to use cygwin. Very convenient if you already have it loaded.

find -iname .svn | xargs rm -rf

This simple command will do the same thing. Just execute it from the folder that you want to start from.