Roll back or revert entire svn repository to an older revision

Question

I messed up on my SVN repository and now need to revert the entire repository from revision 28 to 24 and don't want to deal with diffs or conflicts. Is there a quick and simple way to do this? I've been able to revert back single files before fine with the merge command - but in this instance it wants to add all of the files back into the repository from revision 28 when all I really want to do is delete them.

I am using the command line on a linux box (bash).

Thanks

EDIT

Thanks for all of the help! I fixed it by:

svnadmin create /svnroot/<repo>.fixed
svnadmin dump -r 1:24 /svnroot/<repo> --incremental > dump.svn
svnadmin load /svnroot/<repo>.fixed < dump.svn

Then putting the old repo in a backup location and moving the repo.fixed to repo.

Thanks again!

Answer 1

You can do a new checkout of a particular revision. http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/re04.html

svn co path/to/my/repo -r 24

Answer 2

Quoting first answer:

I have done that already, but it refuses to commit back to the repository as a new revision. Is it possible to do that? I.e. make revision 29 to a copy of revision 24?

Answer 3

A "reverse" merge may be what you need. See "undoing changes" section of svn book.

E.g. svn merge -r 28:24 [path to svn]

Answer 4

I hate to say this, but that is a situation where I've found myself using backups of my svn repository.

Can you copy files of a certain revision to a new directory within the repository?

Answer 5

Check out svnadmin dump/load. It creates a text file with every version of your files. It may be possible to delete everything above/below a certain point and re-import it.

See for instance Migrating Repository Data Elsewhere

Answer 6

If you really want to completely remove files from the repository, you need to do an svndump into a file, filter out the revs and/or file paths you don't want, make a new repo, and svnload the filtered dump into the new repository. You'll want to carefully read the SVN book section on repository maintenance before you do any of this, and make sure you don't remove the existing repo until you're sure the new one has the stuff you want.

Answer 7

I'm not entirely sure if this work as I haven't used it in a live production yet, but I just now tried on a test repository (I copied one of my production ones) and it seems to work.

When you're in your repository, use the following command:

svn update -r 24 trunk

Where 24 is the revision number, and trunk is the file/folder you'd like to update (or restore, in this case) to said revision number.

In my test, several files were updated and (re-)added, and after doing a commit I did not receive any warnings whatsoever. I then modified a file with some dummy text and tried yet another commit, and only said file popped up on the modified list. So it seems to work rather well!

Again, I didn't use this before in live productions, so if I'm wrong please advice. I'd love to know if this is the way to go, too, because I can see myself needing this in the (near) future.

-Dave

Answer 8

If the folder structure of you application hasn't changed, checkout the old revision and replace the .svn folders from the latest revision into the checked out old revision. Now you can commit the "older" version.

Answer 9

If you really need to wipe 'evidence' that the files ever existed, you need to do the svndump/svnload actions described above.

In a 'normal' situation, where you made a mistake, you need to use reverse merge. This make sure that undoing the changes after r24 can also be reverted, diffed, etc.

The command below should work to undo your changes (you need to commit the result of the merge to reflect the merge in the repository)

svn merge -r 28:24

Answer 10

If you have access to the SVN server, you can just edit path/db/current, put the old revision number you want to revert to (here: 24) there, and remove no longer needed revision files (i.e. 25, 26, 27, 28) from path/db/revs/0/. At least this worked for me today, after I had accidentally removed a directory in the repository.

Answer 11

If you do not avail admin rights then you cannot obliterate any old revisions BUT you can still hide them extremely well with just one amazingly simple "svn copy" command (nickf and JesperE already mentioned this but in a rather cryptic way)

svn copy protocol://svnserver/some/resource@24 protocol://svnserver/some/resource

And that's it, revisions 25 to 28 have completely disappeared from svn log. It's not a hack at all, it is a safe and (barely...) documented feature.

If "resource" is a directory then you must strip it from the last URL:

svn copy protocol://svnserver/some/directory@24 protocol://svnserver/some/

(otherwise you would copy it inside itself)

Answer 12

Example:
    Rev 100 all is working great        
    Rev 101 somebody really corrupted the dir structure and / or merged in bad changes, etc.
    Rev 102 You delete /trunk
    Rev 103 You copy /trunk@100 to HEAD
        You now have a /trunk that reflects only Rev 100 and 103. Not 101 or 102.

svn del svn://[RepoName]/trunk -m "removing issue in HEAD"
svn copy svn://[RepoName]/trunk@100 svn://[RepoName]/trunk -m "Copy of correct revision of trunk to HEAD"