Able to delete a specific revision from SVN?

Question

Does SVN allow you to completely and cleanly delete an entire revision from its folder structure?

I used Tortoise SVN to delete a file from the SVN repository, and due to size I want it to be completely removed from the repository. It appears to be deleted from the head revision, but not from the SVN folder structure.

I would like to delete the revision where I added the file to the repository, so there is no trace of this huge file remaining.

Is there ability to completely purge this file out of the repository completely and cleanly?

Thanks for any insights.

Answer 1

Yes and no. This hypothetical feature is called obliterate, but it currently does not exist. Since the feature request dates from 2001, it's not likely that it will ever be implemented either.

You can however completely dump, filter and reload the repository history as described in the svn book.