If I delete a file in Subversion, how can I look at it's history and contents? If I try to do svn cat or svn log on a nonexistent file, it complains that the file doesn't exist.
Also, if I wanted to resurrect the file, should I just svn add it back?
(I asked specifically about Subversion, but I'd also like to hear about how Bazaar, Mercurial, and Git handle this case, too.)
When you want to look at old files you really should know the difference between:
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file -r 1234
and
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file@1234
The first version looks at the path that is now available as http://server/svn/project/file and retrieves that file as it was in revision 1234. (So this syntax does not work after a file delete).
The second syntax gets the file that was available as http://server/svn/project/file in revision 1234. So this syntax DOES work on deleted files.
You can even combine these methods to retrieve a file that was available in revision 2345 as http://server/svn/project/file but with the contents as it had in 1234 with:
svn cat http://server/svn/project/file@2345 -r 1234
First, find the revision number where the file got deleted:
svn log -v > log.txt
Then look in log.txt (not an SVN guru, so I don't know a better way) for a line with
D <deleted file>
and see which revision that was. Then, as in the other answers, resurrect the file using the previous revision.
To get the log of a deleted file, use
svn log -r lastrevisionthefileexisted
If you want to resurrect the file and keep its version history, use
svn copy url/of/file@lastrevisionthefileexisted -r lastrevisionthefileexisted path/to/workingcopy/file
If you just want the file content but unversioned (e.g., for a quick inspection), use
svn cat url/of/file@lastrevisionthefileexisted -r latrevisionthefileexisted > file
In any case, DO NOT use 'svn up' to get a deleted file back!
It's nothing particularly special in git. If you know the name of the file, you can find out the change that removed it with log:
git log -n 1 -- filename
Then you can use that commit to get the file as it existed before the deletion.
git checkout [last_revision]^ filename
dhcp-120:/tmp/slosh 587% ls -l slosh.tac
ls: slosh.tac: No such file or directory
dhcp-120:/tmp/slosh 588% git log -n 1 -- slosh.tac
commit 8d4a1f1a94e4aa37c1cb9d329a140d08eec1b587
Author: Dustin Sallings <dustin@spy.net>
Date: Mon Dec 15 11:25:00 2008 -0800
Get rid of a .conf and replace it with .tac.
dhcp-120:/tmp/slosh 589% git checkout 8d4a1f^ slosh.tac
dhcp-120:/tmp/slosh 590% ll slosh.tac
-rw------- 1 dustin wheel 822 Dec 30 12:52 slosh.tac
Note that this does not actually put the file back in revision control. It simply drops the file as it existed in its final state into the current location. You can then add it or just inspect it or whatever from that point.
Use this command:
svn log -v | awk '/^r[0-9]+/ { rev = $1; }; / D .*filename_escaped_for_regex/ { print rev" "$2; };'
This will list all revisions that ever deleted any files matching the pattern.
That is, if you're searching for file README, then all of /src/README, /src/README.first, and /some/deeply/hidden/directory/READMENOT will be found and listed.
If your filename contains slashes (path), dots, or other special regex characters, don't forget to escape them to avoid mismatching or errors.
In addition to Dustin's answer, if you just want to examine the contents, and not check it out, in his example you can do:
$ git show 8d4a1f^:slosh.tac
the : separates a revision and a path in that revision, effectively asking for a specific path at a specific revision.
Ah, since I am learning to use Bazaar, it is something I tried. Without success, it appears you cannot log and annotate removed files currently... :-(
Tried:
> bzr log -r 3 Stuff/ErrorParser.hta
bzr: ERROR: Path does not have any revision history: Stuff/ErrorParser.hta
but curiously (and fortunately) I can do:
> bzr cat -r 3 Stuff/ErrorParser.hta
and:
> bzr diff -r 2..3 Stuff/ErrorParser.hta
and as suggested in the bug above:
> bzr log -v | grep -B 1 ErrorParser
(adjust -B (--before-context) parameter as needed).