Re: Command to list all revisions (with date?) when a particular was modified?

On Mon, Nov 6, 2023 at 1:34 PM Bo Berglund <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I am hunting for when a particular change was made in a file under version
> control. It happened years ago.
>
> The versioning system was migrated from CVSNT to Subversion back in 2017 and the
> old CVS repository was imported into SVN with all branches and tags etc
> available.
>
> The change I am looking for should have happened back in 2004 when the property
> behind what I am hunting for was changed but I cannot find any message about
> this in my archives...
>
> So now I am looking for *when* a particular section of a source file was changed
> so I would like to list all revisions when this file had a commit to it at all.
>
> Then I will extract the revisions in a binary fashion to find when exactly the
> change that should have been done in 2004 was actually done.
>
> Can this be done somehow using the command line interface to svn?
> If so what would be the correct command to issue?
>
>
> I need to get a list of the revisions where the file was changed.
>
> I tried reading the redbean documentation on line but I am not sure I understand
> the way the export works for different revisions of the same file.
>
> The way I understand svn the revision when you export/checkout a file at a
> specific rev number is the file as it existed at the time that revision was
> committed. So even if the file did not change during that revision there will be
> an exported file if I use the -r argument, right?
>
> So I need to start by some command to give me the revision numbers when the
> specific file *actually changed*. So I can focus on the commits when this file
> changed instead of getting lots of the same file because the revisions were done
> because something else changed..
>
> Can that be done?
>
> --
> Bo Berglund
> Developer in Sweden
>


Some things that might be helpful:

(1) The '--quiet' (or '-q') switch to 'svn log', together with the
<path> as mentioned by Robert, e.g.,:

$ svn log --quiet <path>

Using the INSTALL file in a working copy of Subversion's sources as an example:

$ svn log --quiet INSTALL

------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1911278 | hartmannathan | 2023-07-25 23:25:21 -0400 (Tue, 25 Jul 2023)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1905955 | kotkov | 2022-12-13 04:49:29 -0500 (Tue, 13 Dec 2022)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1903577 | hartmannathan | 2022-08-19 12:31:35 -0400 (Fri, 19 Aug 2022)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1899399 | hartmannathan | 2022-03-30 17:26:30 -0400 (Wed, 30 Mar 2022)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1894501 | dsahlberg | 2021-10-23 03:20:35 -0400 (Sat, 23 Oct 2021)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1894491 | dsahlberg | 2021-10-22 14:43:24 -0400 (Fri, 22 Oct 2021)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1881958 | julianfoad | 2020-09-23 11:04:31 -0400 (Wed, 23 Sep 2020)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1877960 | futatuki | 2020-05-20 14:58:15 -0400 (Wed, 20 May 2020)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(snip some 600 lines)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r840117 | kevin | 2001-09-05 09:59:27 -0400 (Wed, 05 Sep 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r840082 | kfogel | 2001-08-31 02:15:13 -0400 (Fri, 31 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r840068 | kfogel | 2001-08-30 23:22:56 -0400 (Thu, 30 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r839979 | kfogel | 2001-08-16 17:03:09 -0400 (Thu, 16 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r839944 | kfogel | 2001-08-14 20:28:37 -0400 (Tue, 14 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r839943 | kfogel | 2001-08-14 20:23:24 -0400 (Tue, 14 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r839929 | kfogel | 2001-08-13 20:54:08 -0400 (Mon, 13 Aug 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r839536 | kfogel | 2001-06-15 13:00:25 -0400 (Fri, 15 Jun 2001)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r836593 | kfogel | 2000-06-06 13:47:11 -0400 (Tue, 06 Jun 2000)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(2) The '--revision' (or '-r') switch with a {DATE} (or {DATE}:{DATE}
range) instead of a revision number. For example, with the same
INSTALL file, if I want to see the changes made in 2014:

$ svn log --quiet --revision {2014-01-01}:{2014-12-31} INSTALL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1572339 | breser | 2014-02-26 18:21:34 -0500 (Wed, 26 Feb 2014)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

There was only one revision to the file made in 2014. If we remove
'--quiet' we can see the log message:

$ svn log --revision {2014-01-01}:{2014-12-31} INSTALL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1572339 | breser | 2014-02-26 18:21:34 -0500 (Wed, 26 Feb 2014) | 6 lines

Bump required version of Apache httpd to 2.2.x or newer.

* INSTALL: Change from 2.x to 2.2.x or newer.

* configure.ac: Require 2.2.x's module magic number.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If we wanted to see the changes, 'svn log' can take a '--diff' switch:

$ svn log --diff --revision {2014-01-01}:{2014-12-31} INSTALL
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r1572339 | breser | 2014-02-26 18:21:34 -0500 (Wed, 26 Feb 2014) | 6 lines

Bump required version of Apache httpd to 2.2.x or newer.

* INSTALL: Change from 2.x to 2.2.x or newer.

* configure.ac: Require 2.2.x's module magic number.


Index: INSTALL
===================================================================
--- INSTALL (revision 1572338)
+++ INSTALL (revision 1572339)
@@ -436,7 +436,7 @@
          http://freshmeat.net/projects/cyrussasl/


-      9.  Apache Web Server 2.X  (OPTIONAL)
+      9.  Apache Web Server 2.2.X or newer  (OPTIONAL)

           (http://httpd.apache.org/download.cgi)


------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hope this helps,
Nathan