Undoing specific revisions in Subversion

Question

Suppose I have a set of commits in a repository folder...

123 (250 new files, 137 changed files, 14 deleted files)
122 (150 changed files)
121 (renamed folde         


        

Answer 1

I suppose you could create a branch from revision 117, then merge everything except 118 and 120.

svn copy -r 117 source destination

Then checkout this branch and from there do svnmerge.py merge -r119,120-123

EDIT: This doesn't undo the revisions in the branch/trunk. Use svn merge instead.

Answer 2

To undo revisions 118 and 120:

svn up -r HEAD       # get latest revision
svn merge -c -120 .  # undo revision 120
svn merge -c -118 .  # undo revision 118
svn commit           # after solving problems (if any)

Also see the description in Undoing changes.

Note the minus in the -c -120 argument. The -c (or --change) switch is supported since Subversion 1.4, older versions can use -r 120:119.

Answer 3

There's a more straightforward way if you use TortoiseSVN, a Windows client for Subversion. You just click to view the log in your updated work copy, select the revisions you want to undo, right click, and select "Revert changes from these revisions".

It is a safe operation because the changes are applied just in your workspace. You still have to commit to modify your repository.

It is one of the best features of TortoiseSVN. I've always been a command line guy, but Tortoise changed my mind.