SVN reverse merge?

Question

My SVN repository was perfect at revision 497. I performed several bad commits, so that now it is at revision HEAD. I see that to rollback you should use a command like this:

svn merge -r HEAD:497 .

while in the working directory (and the working directory is at the HEAD revision). But is that the right command? Or do I use HEAD:498? or 496? I already ran that command and the current revision doesn't appear to be the same as 497, because when I update -r 497 (or when I have a 497 working copy and I update -r HEAD), a lot of file updates occur.

Do I have some sort of fencepost problem, where HEAD:497 actually reverts to 496, or something? Or is it that when I update, SVN goes back through each revision, despite the fact that the HEAD and 497 are identical?

Edit:

Just to clarify, as I said earlier when I update between 497 and my merged HEAD, I see a lot of file changes take place. I thought that if 497 and HEAD were identical, it would detect that, and no file changes would occur; it would simply say "Updated to revision 497." So is my command wrong, or is this thinking wrong? (and if so, why?)

Answer 1

If you want a quick and reliable way to rollback to a particular revision, then just check out the older revision of the repository.

Run svn info to remind yourself what your repository URL is, then create a new folder and checkout the revision you want:

cd <your new folder>
svn checkout <URL> -r 497 .

Then you can diff that folder against your existing folder, and you can commit that entire revision back into the repository from there if you need to.

Answer 2

If you want to undo r123, you need to svn merge -r 123:122 .

This means you need to run

svn merge -r HEAD:497 .

To verify run:

svn diff -r 497

Answer 3

You need this http://phpcollection.com/revert-files-to-older-svn-version/

Answer 4

For anyone using TortiseSVN, you can just bring up the "Show Log" dialog revert commits from there:

http://tortoisesvn.net/docs/release/TortoiseSVN_en/tsvn-howto-rollback.html

Answer 5

Consider HEAD:150 revert r1=100 and r2 =90

1. svn up
2. svn merge -r 100:99
3. svn merge -r 90:89

Note: These changes will not revert EXTERNALS folder!

Answer 6

Does this help?

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch04s04.html#svn-ch-4-sect-4.2