Useful SVN commands

Usefull SVN commands

Have been increasingly using command line SVN these days. Find it's just a bit quicker and more reliable than the GUI clients I had been using. I've mainly written this for myself, as a quick reference for the commands I use most frequently

svn help COMMAND

• Displays help for a particular svn command.
• Lists all available commands if none is specified

svn co URL[@REV]

• Check out: Creates a local working copy of the repository found at the URL

svn log

• Provides a log of commit messages
• Use with -l 10 to limit to 10 most recent messages
• Use -v for verbose output (lists changed files)
• Use -r 12345 to get info on particular revision

svn info

• Provides useful information about the current working copy, such as repository URL, and current revision

svn status

• Provides a list of diffences between the working copy, and the repostory. Take a look at the help (svn help status to find out what the different column values mean)

svn diff

• Displays local modifications
• Use -r N:M to display differences between two revisions
• Use -c to see the changes for a particular revision

svn revert PATH

• Reverts the specified path to the contents of the repository. You will lost any local changes!
• Not recursive by default, use -R to make recursive

svn add PATH

• Adds the specified path the version control.
• Note, this doesn't add the file to the repository yet, that doesn't happen till you commit.

svn copy SRC[@REV] DEST

• Copies something from SRC to DEST.
• SRC and DEST can both be either working copies paths, or URLS.
• Usual usage would be WC -> WC, or URL -> URL.
• URL -> URL is used for branching and tagging

svn delete TARGET

• Deletes a file.
• If TARGET is a working copy path, the file is scheduled for deletion on the next commit
• If TARGET is a repository URL, it immediately deletes the file from the repository.

svn move SRC DST

• Moves a the specified target.
• Equivalent of a copy then a delete
• Maintains history on the moved file.

svn commit -m MESSAGE

• Commits the working copy changes to the repository

svn list TARGET

• Provied a directory listing for the specified folder in the repository

svn mkdir TARGET

• Creates a directory
• TARGET can be working copy path or repository URL

svn merge -r N:M SOURCE@REV

• Merges the range of revisions starting at N and ending at M from SOURCE into the current working copy
• If N > M then it is a reverse merge, and can be used to undo the differences between N and M
• Typically used to catch up a feature branch
• Can use -c option to pick a single revision
• Can supply multiple -c and -r options to cherry pick revisions

svn merge --reintegrate SOURCE@REV

• Used to reintegrate a branch into it's parent branch
• Working copy should be the parent branch (often trunk)
• A branch cannot be reintegrated twice, so good practice to delete the branch afterwads

svn blame TARGET@REV

• Outputs target, with author names, and revision numbers attached to changes
• Use to see who broke what.