title: Merge folder deletions with SVN causes "invalid status for updating properties" error
body: <p>I'm doing a sparse checkout in SVN, to do a merge for a small change that includes a folder deletion which is causing me headaches. </p>
  
  <p>Here is an example:</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn co https://bigrepo.company.com/ .
  mkdir source_branch
  mkdir source_branch/proc
  mkdir source_branch/proc/new_folder
  touch source_branch/proc/new_folder/new_thing
  svn add . --force
  svn ci
  svn cp source_branch/ target_branch/
  svn ci
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then create a revision in my source branch I want to merge</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn del source_branch/proc/new_folder
  svn ci
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then when merging it to another branch (with a sparse checkout):</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn co https://bigrepo.company.com/target_branch --depth empty .
  svn up --depth empty proc
  svn up --depth empty proc/new_folder
  svn up --depth empty proc/new_folder/new_thing
  svn merge https://bigrepo.company.com/source_branch -c 1635 .
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>svn gives me this error</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>svn: E155023: Can't set properties on 'proc/new_folder/new_thing': invalid status for updating properties.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>BUT if I do a full checkout like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn co https://bigrepo.company.com/target_branch --depth infinity .
  svn merge https://bigrepo.company.com/source_branch -c 1635 .
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The merge works fine. Why doesn't this work with a sparse checkout?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I played around with updating at different levels and I'm not really sure why some work and some don't.</p>
  
  <p>This doesn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn co https://bigrepo.company.com/target_branch --depth empty .
  svn up --depth empty proc/
  svn up --depth infinity proc/new_folder
  svn merge https://bigrepo.company.com/source_branch -c 1635 .
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This works:</p>
  
  <pre><code>svn co https://bigrepo.company.com/target_branch --depth empty .
  svn up --depth infinity proc/
  svn merge https://bigrepo.company.com/source_branch -c 1635 .
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which is a little better, but still not ideal</p>