Checking out with TortoiseSVN

This tutorial will cover the basics on how to checkout (download) an svn repository to a folder on your computer. Other tutorials (aimed at people with permissions to change the repository, can be found here)

For this tutorial, I have used TortoiseSVN, because it's easier to understand for new users.

First of all you need to create a folder for the repository to be downloaded to.
I personally store all projects that I work on in a projects folder of my localhost root(Don't worry if you don't have a localhost, it's not necessary at this point). This helps me to keep things organised, and usually avoids folder name conflicts.

As you can see, I've created a folder called projectpiersvn in an examples folder.
You don't have to call your folder projectpiersvn, just make sure it's descriptive enough for you to know what it is ;)

OK, next up we need to tell TortoiseSVN that we want to create a copy of the Project Pier repository here.
Right click on the folder, and select the 'SVN checkout' button.

Once you've clicked that, a window will pop up, asking you to fill in some details about the repository.

In the url of the repository field, type in

The checkout directory field should have the path to the folder you're downloading the repository to.

And in the Revision area, make sure that 'HEAD revision' is checked, so that you will download the latest version of the files.

Note:
If you only want to download the files for the projectpier project, change the 'URL of repository' field to:
https://projectpier.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/projectpier/ProjectPier
Otherwise you'll be downloading all of the theme, and translation projects too.

Once you've clicked OK, another dialogue box should open up, and a list of filenames should start appearing in box in the centre of the dialogue box.
This is showing what TortoiseSVN is doing, in order to sync your folder with the repository.
After about 10 minutes or so(Depending on your connection, and if you decided to download the entire repository) TortoiseSVN should've finished downloading, and the dialogue box, should look similar to this:

Click the ok button and the dialogue box should closing, leaving you with the explorer window showing your 'projectpiersvn folder'.
If you look at the folder's icon, you should see that has now got a green tick on it:

This green tick tells you that you haven't modified your version of the repository, since you last updated.
If you open the folder, and change one of the files(Don't touch the .svn folders!), the icon will change to this:

As you can probably guess, this icon tells you that you have changed some of the repository files since you last updated.

Once you've checked out all the files you should export the 'default' theme to the directory 'projectpier/trunk/public/themes/', so that browser will style PP properly. (NOTE: The default theme is kept in /themes/default/trunk . You will need to make a folder called default inside /projectpier/trunk/public/themes/ and then export the contents of /themes/default/trunk/ to it). The way I export files, is to open one window on the left which has the files I want to export, and a window on the right which has the location I want to export to.

I then highlight all the files I want to export, and right click drag them over to the window on the right hand side. When you release the right mouse button, a context menu pops like so:

Select the highlighted option, and TortoiseSVN will export the theme to the 'default' folder.

Once that is done, you are ready to install PP!
Simply head to http://localhost/PATH/TO/CHECKED/OUT/PP/TRUNK and follow the install instructions, just as you would when installing a 'stable' version of pp from the website.