svn diff for a complete file?

Question

Given: an SVN repository, a bin directory inside it and a script.pl inside this bin. Some revisions ago, bin and script.pl has been added to the repository in one commit. Since then, some revisions has been applied to script.pl.

Needed: a diff command which would return a complete diff for script.pl from zero to HEAD, i.e. a diff with all lines added.

Background: this diff is needed for code review, for feeding to ReviewBoard

Problem: svn diff with -r X:HEAD (X being the first revision of script.pl) produces a diff between the first version and HEAD while -r X-1:HEAD tell me the file script.pl is unknown in the revision X-1, which is actually correct. However, I can't find a proper solution which would include the diff from an empty file. I also can't diff the bin directory, since it has been added in the same commit as script.pl

Solution: ?

Answer 1

From the top of my head:

svn diff -r X-1:HEAD FILENAME@X

The filename isn't a unique key over time, but filename@revision is.

Answer 2

Wait, you want a diff between the current (HEAD) version of script.pl and the empty file? You don't need a diff for that, because the diff would just be all the lines of the current script.pl with plusses in front of them. Exciting, no?

If you really need it in diff form, Why not just do this?

$ touch EMPTYFILE  # creates a new, empty file
$ diff -u EMPTYFILE script.pl > script.pl.diff

... or the local equivalent, should you be stuck with a less capable system.