Examining History

Your Subversion repository is like a time machine. It keeps a record of every change ever committed, and allows you to explore this history by examining previous versions of files and directories as well as the metadata that accompanies them. With a single Subversion command, you can check out the repository (or restore an existing working copy) exactly as it was at any date or revision number in the past. However, sometimes you just want to peer into the past instead of going into the past.

There are several commands that can provide you with historical data from the repository:

svn log

Shows you broad information: log messages with date and author information attached to revisions, and which paths changed in each revision.

svn diff

Shows line-level details of a particular change.

svn cat

Retrieves a file as it existed in a particular revision number and display it on your screen.

svn list

Displays the files in a directory for any given revision.

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