examining history of deleted file

Question

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 complai

Answer 1

You can find the last revision which provides the file using binary search. I have created a simple /bin/bash script for this:

function svnFindLast(){
 # The URL of the file to be found
 local URL="$1"
 # The SVN revision number which the file appears in (any rev where the file DOES exist)
 local r="$2"
 local R
 for i in $(seq 1 "${#URL}")
  do
   echo "checkingURL:'${URL:0:$i}'" >&2
   R="$(svn info --show-item revision "${URL:0:$i}" 2>/dev/null)"
   echo "R=$R" >&2
   [ -z "$R" ] || break
 done
 [ "$R" ] || {
  echo "It seems '$URL' is not in a valid SVN repository!" >&2
  return -1
 }
 while [ "$r" -ne "$R" -a "$(($r + 1))" -ne "$R" ]
 do
  T="$(($(($R + $r)) / 2))"
  if svn log "${URL}@${T}" >/dev/null 2>&1
   then
    r="$T"
    echo "r=$r" >&2
   else
    R="$T"
    echo "R=$R" >&2
  fi
 done
 echo "$r"
}