Temporarily put away uncommitted changes in Subversion (a la “git-stash”)

Question

While programming software stored in a Subversion repo, I often modify some files, then notice that I\'d like to do some preparatory change for my main work. E.g. while impl

Answer 1

As of 1.10.0 (2018-04-13), you have experimental svn shelve command. (TortoiseSVN supports the command) It's nothing but a helper to save a patch and apply back, so it has same limitations as svn diff + patch (i.e. can't handle binary files and renames). (Edit: Looks like binary support is coming at next version 1.11.0)

Edit^2: With 1.11.0 (released 2018-10-30), binary files are supported. Shelving renamed files remained unsupported. Shelving in 1.11 is incompatible with shelves created by 1.10.

Edit^3: With 1.12.0 (released 2019-04-24), Copying and renaming are supported. Shelving in 1.12 is incompatible with shelves created by earlier versions.

Edit^4: There is no change around shelving with 1.13.0 and 1.14.0. Commands are still marked as experimental and you need to define SVN_EXPERIMENTAL_COMMANDS=shelf3 to enable the feature. It looks like the feature is currently untriaged.

Design notes can be found at developers' Wiki.

$ svn x-shelve --help
x-shelve: Move local changes onto a shelf.
usage: x-shelve [--keep-local] SHELF [PATH...]

  Save the local changes in the given PATHs to a new or existing SHELF.
  Revert those changes from the WC unless '--keep-local' is given.
  The shelf's log message can be set with -m, -F, etc.

  'svn shelve --keep-local' is the same as 'svn shelf-save'.

  The kinds of change you can shelve are committable changes to files and
  properties, except the following kinds which are not yet supported:
     * copies and moves
     * mkdir and rmdir
  Uncommittable states such as conflicts, unversioned and missing cannot
  be shelved.

  To bring back shelved changes, use 'svn unshelve SHELF'.

  Shelves are currently stored under /.svn/experimental/shelves/ .
  (In Subversion 1.10, shelves were stored under /.svn/shelves/ as
  patch files. To recover a shelf created by 1.10, either use a 1.10
  client to find and unshelve it, or find the patch file and use any
  1.10 or later 'svn patch' to apply it.)

  The shelving feature is EXPERIMENTAL. This command is likely to change
  in the next release, and there is no promise of backward compatibility.

Valid options:
  -q [--quiet]             : print nothing, or only summary information
  --dry-run                : try operation but make no changes
  --keep-local             : keep path in working copy

(...)

$ svn x-unshelve --help
x-unshelve: Copy shelved changes back into the WC.
usage: x-unshelve [--drop] [SHELF [VERSION]]

  Apply the changes stored in SHELF to the working copy.
  SHELF defaults to the newest shelf.

  Apply the newest version of the shelf, by default. If VERSION is
  specified, apply that version and discard all versions newer than that.
  In any case, retain the unshelved version and versions older than that
  (unless --drop is specified).

  With --drop, delete the entire shelf (like 'svn shelf-drop') after
  successfully unshelving with no conflicts.

  The working files involved should be in a clean, unmodified state
  before using this command. To roll back to an older version of the
  shelf, first ensure any current working changes are removed, such as
  by shelving or reverting them, and then unshelve the desired version.

  Unshelve normally refuses to apply any changes if any path involved is
  already modified (or has any other abnormal status) in the WC. With
  --force, it does not check and may error out and/or produce partial or
  unexpected results.

  The shelving feature is EXPERIMENTAL. This command is likely to change
  in the next release, and there is no promise of backward compatibility.

Valid options:
  --drop                   : drop shelf after successful unshelve
(...)

$ svn help | grep x-
 x-shelf-diff
 x-shelf-drop
 x-shelf-list (x-shelves)
 x-shelf-list-by-paths
 x-shelf-log
 x-shelf-save
 x-shelve
 x-unshelve