Browsing the Repository
Using svn cat and svn list, you can view various revisions of files and directories without changing the working revision of your working copy. In fact, you don’t even need a working copy to use either one.
svn cat
If you want to examine an earlier version of a file and not necessarily the differences between two files, you can use svn cat:
$ svn cat -r 2 rules.txt Be kind to others Freedom = Chocolate Ice Cream Everything in moderation Chew with your mouth open $
You can also redirect the output directly into a file:
$ svn cat -r 2 rules.txt > rules.txt.v2 $
svn list
The svn list command shows you which files are in a repository directory without actually downloading the files to your local machine:
$ svn list http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn README branches/ clients/ tags/ trunk/
If you want a more detailed listing, pass the
--verbose (-v) flag to get output like this:
$ svn list -v http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn 20620 harry 1084 Jul 13 2006 README 23339 harry Feb 04 01:40 branches/ 21282 sally Aug 27 09:41 developer-resources/ 23198 harry Jan 23 17:17 tags/ 23351 sally Feb 05 13:26 trunk/
The columns tell you the revision at which the file or directory was last modified, the user who modified it, the size if it is a file, the date it was last modified, and the item’s name.
Warning
The svn list command with no arguments
defaults to the repository URL of the current
working directory, not the local working copy
directory. After all, if you want a listing of your local directory,
you could use just plain ls (or
any reasonable non-Unixy equivalent).