How can I force subversion to commit an unchanged file?

Question

I want subversion to commit a file even if it\'s unchanged. Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

The reason why someone wants to commit unchanged file is misunderstanding of how to revert to a previous version of a file.

For example, one may revert the file index.html in the revision 680 by just updating it to a revision in the past, e.g. 650:

svn update index.html -r 650

but it does not solve the problem, because:

svn status -u index.html
        *      650   index.html
Status against revision:    680

svn clearly says that index.html is modified remotely and you can't commit it, i.e. it "thinks" that index.html is old and should be updated to a newer revision. So the next svn update will bring index.html back to the revision 680.

To really revert a file you should merge it in reverse order:

svn merge -r 680:650 index.html

and then commit it svn ci -m "Reverted to r650" index.html