Update Item to Revision vs Revert to Revision

Question

I ve started to use Subversion with TortoiseSVN  If I open up the log and right click on an old revision I see two options that sound like they roll back to an older version   Update item to revision  and  Revert to this revision    I understand that updating to an older revision is used when you only want to look back at an old version but not really change the repository  Revert is when you actually screwed up and want the latest revision in the repository to be the same as an older version   So say the HEAD revision is 100 and I revert back to 95  It will reverse merge my working copy back to 95  Then I can commit that change to the repository which would create revision 101 correct  How is that different if I were to update back to revision 95  Doesn t it still just reverse the changes from the last revisions  I m confused as to how the state of my working copy differs after a Reverting or Updating to an older revision

User · Answer

The text from the Tortoise reference   Update item to revision Update your working copy to the selected revision  Useful if you want to have your working copy reflect a time in the past  or if there have been further commits to the repository and you want to update your working copy one step at a time  It is best to update a whole directory in your working copy  not just one file  otherwise your working copy could be inconsistent    If you want to undo an earlier change permanently  use Revert to this revision instead    Revert to this revision Revert to an earlier revision  If you have made several changes  and then decide that you really want to go back to how things were in revision N  this is the command you need  The changes are undone in your working copy so this operation does not affect the repository until you commit the changes  Note that this will undo all changes made after the selected revision  replacing the file folder with the earlier version    If your working copy is in an unmodified state  after you perform this action your working copy will show as modified  If you already have local changes  this command will merge the undo changes into your working copy    What is happening internally is that Subversion performs a reverse merge of all the changes made after the selected revision  undoing the effect of those previous commits    If after performing this action you decide that you want to undo the undo and get your working copy back to its previous unmodified state  you should use TortoiseSVN   Revert from within Windows Explorer  which will discard the local modifications made by this reverse merge action    If you simply want to see what a file or folder looked like at an earlier revision  use Update to revision or Save revision as    instead

User · Answer

The files in your working copy might look exactly the same after  but they are still very different actions -- the repository is in a completely different state  and you will have different options available to you after reverting than  updating  to an old revision   Briefly   update to  only affects your working copy  but  reverse merge and commit  will affect the repository   If you  update  to an old revision  then the repository has not changed  in your example  the HEAD revision is still 100   You don t have to commit anything  since you are just messing around with your working copy   If you make modifications to your working copy and try to commit  you will be told that your working copy is out-of-date  and you will need to update before you can commit   If someone else working on the same repository performs an  update   or if you check out a second working copy  it will be r100   However  if you  reverse merge  to an old revision  then your working copy is still based on the HEAD  assuming you are up-to-date  -- but you are creating a new revision to supersede the unwanted changes   You have to commit these changes  since you are changing the repository   Once done  any updates or new working copies based on the HEAD will show r101  with the contents you just committed

User · Answer

Update to revision will only update files of your workingcopy to your choosen revision   But you cannot continue to work on this revision  as SVN will complain that your workingcopy is out of date   revert to this revision will undo all changes in your working copy which were made after the selected revision  in your example rev  96 97 98 99 100  Your working copy is now in modified state    The file content of both scenarions is same  however in first case you have an unmodified working copy and you cannot commit your changes as your workingcopy is not pointing to HEAD rev 100  in second case you have a modified working copy pointing to head and you can continue to work and commit

User · Answer

Update your working copy to the selected revision  Useful if you want to have your working copy reflect a time in the past  or if there have been further commits to the repository and you want to update your working copy one step at a time  It is best to update a whole directory in your working copy  not just one file  otherwise your working copy could be inconsistent  This is used to test a specific rev purpose  if your test has done  you can use this command to test another rev or use SVN Update to get HEAD  If you want to undo an earlier change permanently  use Revert to this revision instead    -- from TSVN help doc  If you Update your working copy to an earlier rev  this is only affect your own working copy  after you do some change  and want to commit  you will fail TSVN will alert you to update your WC to latest revision first If you Revert to a rev  you can commit to repository everyone will back to the rev after they do an update

User · Answer

To understand how the state of your working copy is different in both scenarios  you must understand the concept of the BASE revision      BASE      The revision number of an item in a working copy  If the item has been   locally modified  this refers to the   way the item appears without those   local modifications    Your working copy contains a snapshot of each file  hidden in a  svn folder  in this BASE revision  meaning as it was when last retrieved from the repository  This explains why working copies take 2x the space and how it is possible that you can examine and even revert local modifications without a network connection   Update item to Revision changes this base revision  making BASE out of date  When you try to commit local modifications  SVN will notice that your BASE does not match the repository HEAD  The commit will be refused until you do an update  and possibly a merge  to fix this   Revert to revision does not change BASE  It is conceptually almost the same as manually editing the file to match an earlier revision

User · Answer

BaltoStar update to revision syntax   http   svnbook red-bean com en 1 6 svn ref svn c update html  svn update -r30   Where 30 is revision number  Hope this help

[svn] Update Item to Revision vs Revert to Revision

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