How do I return to an older version of our code in Subversion

Question

I m working on a project with a friend and I want to return to an older version of our code and set it to be the current  How do I do it   I m using  anksvn  on vs08   I have the version that I want on my PC  but the commit is failing  The message that I get is   commit is failed  file or directory is out of date    I also have the subversion client on my PC

User · Answer

The standard way of using merge to undo the entire check-in works great, if that's what you want to do. Sometimes, though, all you want to do is revert a single file. There's no legitimate way to do that, but there is a hack:

Find the version that you want using svn log.
Use svn's export subcommand:

svn export http://url-to-your-file@123 /tmp/filename

(Where 123 is the revision number for a good version of the file.) Then either move or copy that single file to overwrite the old one. Check in the modified file and you are done.

User · Answer

Sync to the older version and commit it  This should do the trick   Here s also an explanation of undoing changes

User · Answer

Just use this line     svn update -r yourOldRevesion   You can know your current revision by using      svn info

User · Answer

I think this is most suited   Do the merging backward  for instance  if the committed code contains the revision from rev 5612 to 5616  just merge it backwards  It works in my end   For instance   svn merge -r 5616 5612 https    lt your svn repository gt     It would contain a merged code back to former revision  then you could commit it

User · Answer

There are a lot of dangerous answers on this page  Note that since SVN version 1 6  doing an update -r can cause tree conflicts  which rapidly escalates into a potentially data losing kafkeresque nightmare where you re googling for information on tree conflicts    The correct way to revert to a version is   svn merge -r HEAD 12345     Where 12345 is the version number  Don t forget the dot

User · Answer

Right click the project   Replace With   Revision or URL   Select the specific revision you want to revert   Now commit the local update code version to the repository  This will revert the code base to the specific revision

User · Answer

The following has worked for me   I had a lot of local changes and needed to discard those in the local copy and checkout the last stable version in SVN    Check the status of all files  including the ignored files  Grep all the lines to get the newly added and ignored files  Replace those with     and rm -rf all the lines   svn status --no-ignore   grep     I      sed  s    I        xargs -I   rm -rf

User · Answer

A bit more old-school   svn diff -r 150 140  gt     r140 patch patch -p0  lt     r140 patch   then the usual  svn diff svn commit

User · Answer

Most of the previous answers have been using a reverse merge  and that s usually the right answer   However  there s one situation  which just happened to me  where it s not   I accidentally changed a file with Unix line endings to DOS line endings when making a small change  and committed it   This is easily undone  either by changing the line endings and committing again  or by a reverse merge  but it has the effect of making svn blame list my edit as the source of every line of the file    Interestingly  TortoiseSVN on Windows doesn t get affected by this  only the command line svn blame    If you want to maintain the history as reported by svn blame  I think you need to do the following    Delete the file and commit  In the repository  copy the previous good copy of the file into the head  and commit  Restore any edits that you do want to keep    The deletion is a little scary  but remember you always have the file saved in the repository  so restoring it is not a big deal   Here s some code to illustrate the steps   Assume that xxx is the revision number of the last good copy   svn rm svn ssh   path to file svn copy svn ssh   path to file xxx svn ssh   path to -m Restore good copy  svn update  lt restore the edits gt  svn commit -m Restore edits    Note that for a copy in the repository  the destination needs to be a directory  not a filename

User · Answer

You can only commit new changes at the head of the subversion history   The reason you can t do anything directly with the good copy you have on your PC  is that its  svn folders know that it is code from the past  so requires an update before any commit   Find the good revision number and revert   Find the revision number of the old copy you want   Get your current revision with   svn info --show-item revision   or svn log   Or to check older versions of your project  use   svn update -r  lt earlier revision number gt    until you find the right revision number  Note down the good revision number  assuming 123 for examples below   Update to the latest revision   svn update  Undo all the changes between the revision you want and the latest version   svn merge -r HEAD 123   svn commit  Reverted to revision 123     the same as Jon Skeet s answer above     If you can t find the revision number  If you can t find the old copy  and you just want to commit the files currently on your PC    Make a copy of your good version  but without any  svn folders    cd    rsync -ai --exclude  svn  project   project-good   Now make sure you have the latest version   cd project svn update   or make a fresh checkout svn checkout  lt url gt   Copy your good version over the top of the working copy   This command will copy  and also delete any files from the working tree that aren t in your good copy  but it won t affect the existing  svn folders   cd    rsync -ai --exclude  svn --delete  project-good   project    If you don t have rsync  you can use cp -a but you will also need to delete any unwanted files manually  You should be able to commit what you have now   cd project svn commit  Reverted to good copy

User · Answer

This is what I did and worked for me   I want to undo the changes in multiple commits that I did for certain times and want to go to the previous commit point    Go to Team -  Show History  Right-click on the or range of revisions you want to ignore  Select the  Revert changes  option    This will run a reverse merge  undoing the changes in your working copy    Just review the code and commit

User · Answer

Jon Skeet s answer is pretty much the solution in a nutshell  however if you are like me  you might want an explanation  The Subversion manual calls this a  Cherry-Pick Merge  From the man pages         This form is called a  cherry-pick  merge     -r N M  refers to the difference in the history of the    source branch between revisions N and M        A  reverse range  can be used to undo changes  For example  when    source and target refer to the same branch  a previously committed    revision can be  undone   In a reverse range  N is greater than M in     -r N M   or the  -c  option is used with a negative number   -c -M     is equivalent to  -r M    Undoing changes like this is also known    as performing a  reverse merge                If the source is a file  then differences are applied to that   file  useful for reverse-merging earlier changes   Otherwise    if the source is a directory  then the target defaults to           In normal usage the working copy should be up to date  at a single    revision  with no local modifications and no switched subtrees       Example   svn merge -r 2983 289 path to file   This will replace the local copy 2983   which  according to the quote above  should be in sync with the server--your responsibility  with the revision 289 from the server  The change happens locally  which means if you have a clean checkout  then the changes can be inspected before committing them

User · Answer

Basically you need to  merge backwards  - apply a diff between the current and previous version to the current version  so you end up with a working copy looking like the old version  and then commit again  So for example to go from revision 150  current  back to revision 140   svn update svn merge -r 150 140   svn commit -m  Rolled back to r140    The Subversion Red Book has a good section about this

User · Answer

Right-click on the highest hierarchy you want to revert    Revert or Revert to Revision

[svn] How do I return to an older version of our code in Subversion?

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