The happy case trial ended like these:

$ svn export -r 80:81 https://svn.example.com/trunk/ ./testdiff
svn: Revision range is not allowed

Finally I google a while and I made a bash script can handle incremental export. The methodology is quite simple:

• copies whole previous export to the new place
• exports modified and added files since previous revision
• removes deleted files (compared to prev. rev.)
• patches new revision. means force a copy from already prepared folder contains config files, symlinks to binary – non versioned – content. etc.
• relinks webroot to a new one
• restarts webserver

#!/bin/bash

##############################
# settings and inicilization #
##############################

SVN_SOURCE="https://svn.example.com/trunk/"
REV_PATH="/var/www/revisions/example.com/"
PATCH_PATH="/var/www/patch/example.com/"
SYM_PATH="/var/www/public/example.com"

TIME_SPENT=$(date +%s)
REV=$(svn info $SVN_SOURCE | grep Revision | cut -d ' ' -f 2)
PREV=0
VERBOSIVE=0

USAGE_INFO="$(basename "$0") [-r REVISION_NUM] [-i PREVIOUS_REVISION_NUM] -- make an incremental svn export

where:
  -i  previous revision (default: 0)
  -h  show this help text
  -r  revision to export (default: $REV)
  -v  verbosive mode. show fetched files

current settins:
  SVN_SOURCE: $SVN_SOURCE
  REV_PATH:   $REV_PATH
  PATCH_PATH: $PATCH_PATH
  SYM_PATH:   $SYM_PATH
"

while getopts r:i:hv option; do
  case "$option" in
    i)  PREV=$OPTARG
        ;;
    h)  echo "$USAGE_INFO"
        exit
        ;;
    r)  REV=$OPTARG
        ;;
    v)  VERBOSIVE=1
        ;;
  esac
done

EV_PATH=$REV_PATH$REV"/"

##############################
#         functions          #
##############################

promtYesOrDie(){
  while true; do
    read -e -p "$1 (y/n): " -i "y" yn
    case $yn in
      [Yy] ) break;;
      [Nn] ) echo "spent: "$((`date +%s` - $TIME_SPENT))"s"
             echo "bye bye"
             exit
             ;;
         * ) echo "Please answer (y)es or (n)o.";;
    esac
  done
}

doIncrementalExport(){
  PREV_PATH=$REV_PATH$PREV"/"
  if [ -d $PREV_PATH ]; then
    echo "copying files from: $PREV_PATH"
    cp -f -r "$PREV_PATH." $EV_PATH
    echo "fetching added and modified files since revision $PREV..."
    for FILE_SRC in $(svn diff --summarize -r $PREV:$REV $SVN_SOURCE | awk '/[AM]/ {print $2}'); do
      FILE_PATH=$(echo $FILE_SRC | sed -e "s{$SVN_SOURCE{{");
      if [ ! -d "$EV_PATH$FILE_PATH" ]; then
        TRG_DIR="$EV_PATH$(dirname $FILE_PATH)"
        mkdir -p $TRG_DIR
        svn export -r$REV -q --force $FILE_SRC "$EV_PATH$FILE_PATH"
        if [ $VERBOSIVE -eq 1 ]; then
          echo "$EV_PATH$FILE_PATH"
        fi
      fi
    done
    echo "removing deleted files and folders since revision $PREV ..."
    for FILE_SRC in $(svn diff --summarize -r $PREV:$REV $SVN_SOURCE | awk '/D/ {print $2}'); do
      FILE_PATH=$(echo $FILE_SRC | sed -e "s{$SVN_SOURCE{{");
      rm -r "$EV_PATH$FILE_PATH"
      if [ $VERBOSIVE -eq 1 ]; then
        echo "$EV_PATH$FILE_PATH"
      fi
    done
  else
    echo "previous revision does not exist at: $PREV_PATH"
    exit;
  fi
}

##############################
#       main function        #
##############################

if [ $PREV -eq 0 ]; then
  promtYesOrDie "Do you want to do full export instead of incremental, for revision $REV of repo: [$SVN_SOURCE]"
  echo "fatching source ..."
  if [ $VERBOSIVE -eq 1 ]; then
    svn export -r$REV --force $SVN_SOURCE $EV_PATH
  else
    svn export -r$REV -q --force $SVN_SOURCE $EV_PATH
  fi
else
  promtYesOrDie "Do you want to do incremental export, for revision renge $PREV:$REV of repo: [$SVN_SOURCE]"
  doIncrementalExport
fi

echo "patching from $PATCH_PATH .."
cp -f -r "$PATCH_PATH." $EV_PATH

echo "changing owners and permissions .."
chown www-data:www-data -R $EV_PATH
chmod 0775 -R $EV_PATH

promtYesOrDie "Do you want to make the changes to do live? You should do it manually if got any error!"
echo "update symlink $SYM_PATH to $EV_PATH"
ln -sfn $EV_PATH $SYM_PATH

promtYesOrDie "Do you want to restart web server?"
echo "restarting php-fastcgi and nginx"
/etc/init.d/php-fastcgi restart
/etc/init.d/nginx restart

#echo "restarting apache"
#/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

echo "spent: "$((`date +%s` - $TIME_SPENT))"s"
echo [done]

So what we need is a mysql backup solution, probably a bash script what makes separate files per each db and ignores archive and memory engines of course with possibilities of gzipping.

I googled but I didn’t found what exactly we need, fortunately I found some similar like this one: http://carrotplant.com/en/blog/how-to-dump-all-mysql-databases-into-separate-files and I combine them together.

Finally there are the dump script.

#!/bin/bash

############
# Settings #
############

# mysql parameters
MYSQL_USER="root"
MYSQL_PASSWORD="******"
MYSQLDUMP="/usr/bin/mysqldump"
MYSQL="/usr/bin/mysql"
BACKUP_LOCATION="/var/backups/ervername/mysql/"
BACKUP_SQLDIR=$BACKUP_LOCATION$(date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M)
EXCLUDE_DBS="(Database|information_schema|phpmyadmin|mysql)"
EXCLUDE_EGX="(MEMORY|ARCHIVE)"
GZIP_ENABLED=1

##############
# THE SCRIPT #
##############

echo "sophisticated dump of mysql databases"
echo "destination: $BACKUP_SQLDIR"
echo "ignore these databases: $EXCLUDE_DBS"
echo "ignore these engines: $EXCLUDE_EGX"
echo "gzipping: $GZIP_ENABLED"

#returns list of ignired tables
ignoredtables () {
   local IGNORES
   TABLES=`$MYSQL --user=$MYSQL_USER --password=$MYSQL_PASSWORD -e "USE $1; SHOW TABLE STATUS;"  | grep -E $EXCLUDE_EGX | awk '{print $1}'`
   for CURRENT_TB in $TABLES; do
       IGNORES="$IGNORES --ignore-table=$1.$CURRENT_TB"
   done
   echo $IGNORES
}

if [ ! -d "$BACKUP_SQLDIR" ]; then
    echo "make dir: "$BACKUP_SQLDIR
    mkdir -p $BACKUP_SQLDIR
fi

# get a list of databases
DATABASES=`$MYSQL --user=$MYSQL_USER --password=$MYSQL_PASSWORD -e "SHOW DATABASES;" | grep -Ev $EXCLUDE_DBS`

# dump each database in turn
echo "dumping databases..."
TIME_SPENT=`date +%s`
OVERAL_SPENT=`date +%s`
for CURRENT_DB in $DATABASES; do
    echo $CURRENT_DB
    IGNORED_TABLES=`ignoredtables $CURRENT_DB`
    if [ $GZIP_ENABLED == 1 ]; then
        $MYSQLDUMP --force --opt --routines --user=$MYSQL_USER --password=$MYSQL_PASSWORD $IGNORED_TABLES $CURRENT_DB | gzip > "$BACKUP_SQLDIR/$CURRENT_DB.sql.gz"
    else
        $MYSQLDUMP --force --opt --routines --user=$mYSQL_USER --password=$MYSQL_PASSWORD $IGNORED_TABLES $CURRENT_DB > "$BACKUP_SQLDIR/$CURRENT_DB.sql"
    fi
    TIME_SPENT=$((`date +%s` - $TIME_SPENT))
    echo "spent: "$TIME_SPENT"s         overal: "$((`date +%s` - $OVERAL_SPENT))"s"
    TIME_SPENT=`date +%s`
done

# removes previous backup older then 7 days
find $BACKUP_LOCATION -mtime +7 -type d -exec rm -Rv {} \;

echo "[done]"