how can I search an svn repository for the existence of files in any revision

Question

How can I search if a file named foo.txt was ever committed to my svn repository (in any revision)?

I guess the short answer is "search the log". How you accomplish that depends on how you interface with SVN, hence Martijn's and my differing answers. — Adam Bellaire, Dec 24 '08 at 16:23
Well put Adam :) i was replying with a coded answer at first as well but then noticed the rather explicit tortoiseSVN tag. — Martijn Laarman, Dec 24 '08 at 16:44
Right, I missed that. Still, I'll leave my answer around, someone might be interested. — Adam Bellaire, Dec 24 '08 at 16:46

score 41 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 13 '14 at 22:30

41

Right click on the checked out folder's root > TortoiseSVN > Show Log

You can enter file names just as well there.

edited Nov 13 '14 at 22:30

Simon F

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answered Dec 24 '08 at 16:15

Martijn Laarman

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Can't set date(from - to). – Kate Nov 18 '13 at 09:51
Yeah, Click and discover Imageshack. I got it. – bahrep Oct 09 '14 at 09:48
Can't set date, but you can click on 'Next 100' to see more results – Efreeto Feb 26 '15 at 19:00
You don't necessarily have to 'check out' to search files. You can use repo-browser and then show log too. – Efreeto Feb 26 '15 at 19:03
This answer along with the comment from Efreet did the trick! Next 100 moved the date back for me. Thanks! – ScottyG Apr 01 '15 at 19:28

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 24 '08 at 16:10

11

This should work for you:

svn log -r 0:HEAD -v $REPOSITORY_PATH | grep "/foo.txt"

This will give you the paths to the files and the state from the log. If you get any hits, you know it existed at some point. If you get no results, there is nothing matching anywhere in the repository at any revision. You'll also see the states from each log line, e.g.:

   A /some/path/foo.txt
   D /some/path/foo.txt

But I'm guessing the extra info isn't a problem for you. :)

answered Dec 24 '08 at 16:10

Adam Bellaire

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That'd work. You could filter for the first occurrence with 'svn ... | grep /foo.txt | head -1' – orip Dec 24 '08 at 16:34
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Thanks, could you please help in getting revisions numbers with those logs? – linuxeasy Oct 10 '12 at 06:25
When you say REPOSITORY_PATH do you mean the path on the file system or the url of the location in the repository? – Alan Smith Jan 24 '13 at 14:30

bahrep · Answer 3 · 2015-02-25T11:33:59.583

Use Subversion 1.8+ client and new --search and --search-and options become available for svn log command. These options do not allow perform full-text search inside a repository and looks up the following data only:

revision's author (svn:author unversioned property),
date (svn:date unversioned property),
log message text (svn:log unversioned property),
list of changed paths (i.e. paths affected by the particular revision).

As far as I guess, you can search for "foo.txt" with the following command line:

svn log -v --search "foo.txt".

Here is the complete help page about these new svn log search options:

 If the --search option is used, log messages are displayed only if the
 provided search pattern matches any of the author, date, log message
 text (unless --quiet is used), or, if the --verbose option is also
 provided, a changed path.
 The search pattern may include "glob syntax" wildcards:
     ?      matches any single character
     *      matches a sequence of arbitrary characters
     [abc]  matches any of the characters listed inside the brackets
 If multiple --search options are provided, a log message is shown if
 it matches any of the provided search patterns. If the --search-and
 option is used, that option's argument is combined with the pattern
 from the previous --search or --search-and option, and a log message
 is shown only if it matches the combined search pattern.
 If --limit is used in combination with --search, --limit restricts the
 number of log messages searched, rather than restricting the output
 to a particular number of matching log messages.

Note you can specify a repo path with: svn log $REPOSITORY_PATH -v --search "foo.txt" — riskyc123, Jun 05 '19 at 16:23

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 16 '21 at 12:39

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I use powershell and the command svn list -R to search the repo recursively and then pipe the results into findstr or similar, like:

svn list -r HEAD -R | findstr /R /I "\/obj\$/ \/bin\/$"

answered Feb 16 '21 at 12:39

Johan Danforth

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how can I search an svn repository for the existence of files in any revision

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