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

I don't think that's possible, but first of all why do you need to do that? If a file is unchanged it shouldn't be commited.

If you really want that file grouped with other files in a commit you could change something minor inside (add a space for example).

Answer 2

As to answer why one would like to do forced commits. I've seen cases where someone used a commit message that was wrong or unclear. It's nice if you can perform a forced commit, where you can correct this mistake. That way the updated commit message goes into the repository, so it won't get lost.

Answer 3

Answering some people questioning this should be possible: for some reason svn doesn't recognizes differences between doc files, so I would like to force commit as well!

I am now moving documentation from static dirs, to svn. files are like UG_v1.2, UG_v1.3 etc. So just to keep history, I take 1.2, remove version from the filename and add and commit it to svn. Then I take the ver from the second one, copy it over the first one and want to commit it and newer version. File size and creation date changes (not mentioning what's inside the doc), but svn claims it's perfectly the same file and disallows me to commit. When I manually change the doc, svn sees the different. The heck? :>

Answer 4

I thought you could do it from the command line?

svn ci -force <filename>

I don't have a repository here to check that on, so I might be wrong.

Answer 5

If it's a text file just add some whitespace, such as a line feed.

Answer 6

I have the same problem with a trueCrypt volume.

I added a new property (as suggested above) "forceCommit1" and them I was able to commit the volume file. but only the property was commited not the contents of the file.

I removed the file and added it again to the svn