[svn] Current Subversion revision command

Is there a Subversion command to show the current revision number?

After svn checkout I want to start a script and need the revision number in a variable. It would be great if there is a command like svn info get_revision_number.

This question is related to svn

The answer is


There is also a more convenient (for some) svnversion command.

Output might be a single revision number or something like this (from -h):

  4123:4168     mixed revision working copy
  4168M         modified working copy
  4123S         switched working copy
  4123:4168MS   mixed revision, modified, switched working copy

I use this python code snippet to extract revision information:

import re
import subprocess

p = subprocess.Popen(["svnversion"], stdout = subprocess.PIPE, 
    stderr = subprocess.PIPE)
p.wait()
m = re.match(r'(|\d+M?S?):?(\d+)(M?)S?', p.stdout.read())
rev = int(m.group(2))
if m.group(3) == 'M':
    rev += 1

Nobody mention for Windows world SubWCRev, which, properly used, can substitute needed data into the needed places automagically, if script call SubWCRev in form SubWCRev WC_PATH TPL-FILE READY-FILE

Sample of my post-commit hook (part of)

SubWCRev.exe CustomLocations Builder.tpl  z:\Builder.bat
...
call z:\Builder.bat

where my Builder.tpl is

svn.exe export trunk z:\trunk$WCDATE=%Y%m%d$-r$WCREV$

as result, I have every time bat-file with variable part - name of dir - which corresponds to the metadata of Working Copy


Use something like the following, taking advantage of the XML output of subversion:

# parse rev from popen "svn info --xml"
dom = xml.dom.minidom.parse(os.popen('svn info --xml'))
entry = dom.getElementsByTagName('entry')[0]
revision = entry.getAttribute('revision')

Note also that, depending on what you need this for, the <commit revision=...> entry may be more what you're looking for. That gives the "Last Changed Rev", which won't change until the code in the current tree actually changes, as opposed to "Revision" (what the above gives) which will change any time anything in the repository changes (even branches) and you do an "svn up", which is not the same thing, nor often as useful.


  1. First of all svn status has the revision number, you can read it from there.

  2. Also, each file that you store in SVN can store the revision number in itself -- add the $Rev$ keyword to your file and run propset: svn propset svn:keywords "Revision" file

  3. Finally, the revision number is also in .svn/entries file, fourth line

Now each time you checkout that file, it will have the revision in itself.


Just used @badcat's answer in a modified version, using subprocess.check_output():

import subprocess
revision = subprocess.check_output("svn info | awk '/^Revision:/ {print $2}'", shell=True).strip()

I believe you can also, install and use pysvn if you want to use python to interface with svn.


Otherwise for old version, if '--show-item' is not recognize, you can use the following command :

svn log -r HEAD | grep -o -E "^r[0-9]{1,}" | sed 's/r//g'

Hope it helps.


I think I have to do svn info and then retrieve the number with a string manipulation from "Revision: xxxxxx" It would be just nice, if there were a command that returns just the number :)


REV=svn info svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/retroshare/code/trunk | grep 'Revision:' | cut -d\ -f2


svn info, I believe, is what you want.

If you just wanted the revision, maybe you could do something like:

svn info | grep "Revision:"