Tortoise usage pattern no longer works: sort by creation date, nor sort by revision is possible

Question

I have been using Tortoise for years.

My standard usage idiom is to have my win explorer view set to my default sort the files in inverse cronological order by modify date.

Problem: if you have to do a full checkout, the modify date becomes the create date which is the date of the checkout.

So... in that case I sort in inverse revision number order. Win explorer allowed me to put the revision in a column of the detailed display. Sorting by that is a close proxy for the modify date.

Problem: Win Vista, and Win 7 no longer allow me to display this column. Nor does an SVN checkout maintain the modify date.

So my standard usage idiom is no longer possible.

I'd like to see if people have suggestions for how to get around this other than dropping to the command line.

I'm afraid that tortoise SVN is going to have to go away and be replaced by a different file browsing UI that provides the revison column sort behavior. If there is a good one then perhaps that wll be ok.

OTOH, if somebody knows a way for SVN itself to actually maintain files in a way which presreves the file modify dates across commits/checkouts then that would be the best solution. or even if it gave the checked-out file the date of the last commit that modified that file - that would work fine.

Answer 1

You could make Subversion make the filedates equal to the last commit date. And since the last commit date is usually (almost) the same as the last modification date, your workflow would work again.

TortoiseSVN->Settings dialog->General->"Set file dates to the "last commit time""