To use the command-line client, type svn, the subcommand you wish to use, [58] and any options or targets that you wish to operate on—the subcommand and the options need not appear in a specific order. For example, all of the following are valid ways to use svn status:
$ svn -v status $ svn status -v $ svn status -v myfile
You can find many more examples of how to use most client commands in Chapter 2, Basic Usage and commands for managing properties in the section called “Properties”.
While Subversion has different options for its
subcommands, all options exist in a single
namespace—that is, each option is guaranteed to mean the
same thing regardless of the subcommand you use it with. For
example, --verbose (-v)
always means “verbose output,” regardless of the
subcommand you use it with.
The svn command-line client usually exits quickly with an error if you pass it an option which does not apply to the specified subcommand. But as of Subversion 1.5, several of the options which apply to all—or nearly all—of the subcommands have been deemed acceptable by all subcommands, even if they have no effect on some of them. They appear grouped together in the command-line client's usage messages as global options. This was done to assist folks who write scripts which wrap the command-line client. These global options are as follows:
--config-dir
DIR
Instructs Subversion to read configuration
information from the specified directory instead of the
default location (.subversion in
the user's home directory).
--no-auth-cache
Prevents caching of authentication information (e.g., username and password) in the Subversion runtime configuration directories.
--non-interactive
Disables all interactive prompting. Some examples of interactive prompting include requests for authentication credentials and conflict resolution decisions. This is useful if you're running Subversion inside an automated script and it's more appropriate to have Subversion fail than to prompt for more information.
--password
PASSWD
Specifies the password to use when authenticating against a Subversion server. If not provided, or if incorrect, Subversion will prompt you for this information as needed.
--username
NAME
Specifies the username to use when authenticating against a Subversion server. If not provided, or if incorrect, Subversion will prompt you for this information as needed.
The rest of the options apply and are accepted by only a subset of the subcommand. They are as follows:
--accept
ACTION
Specifies an action for automatic conflict resolution.
Possible actions are postpone,
base, mine-full,
theirs-full, edit, and
launch.
--auto-props
Enables auto-props, overriding the
enable-auto-props directive in the
config file.
--change (-c)
ARG
Used as a means to refer to a specific “change” (a.k.a. a revision). This option is syntactic sugar for “-r ARG-1:ARG”.
--changelist
ARG
Instructs Subversion to operate only on members of the changelist named
ARG. You can use this option
multiple times to specify sets of changelists.
--cl
ARG
An alias for the
--changelist option.
--depth
ARG
Instructs Subversion to limit the scope of an operation to a particular tree
depth. ARG is one of
empty, files,
immediates, or
infinity.
--diff-cmd
CMD
Specifies an external program to use to show
differences between files. When svn
diff is invoked without this option, it uses
Subversion's internal diff engine, which provides
unified diffs by default. If you want to use an
external diff program, use --diff-cmd.
You can pass options to the diff program with the
--extensions (-x)
option (more on that later in this section).
--diff3-cmd
CMD
Specifies an external program to use to merge files.
--dry-run
Goes through all the motions of running a command, but makes no actual changes—either on disk or in the repository.
--editor-cmd
CMD
Specifies an external program to use to edit a log message
or a property value. See the editor-cmd
section in the section called “Config”
for ways to specify a default editor.
--encoding ENC
Tells Subversion that your commit message is encoded in the charset provided. The default is your operating system's native locale, and you should specify the encoding if your commit message is in any other encoding.
--extensions (-x)
ARG
Specifies an argument or arguments that Subversion
should pass to an external diff command. This option is
valid only when used with the svn
diff or svn merge commands,
with the
--diff-cmd option.
If you wish to pass multiple
arguments, you must enclose all of them in quotes (e.g.,
svn diff --diff-cmd /usr/bin/diff -x
"-b -E").
--file (-F)
FILENAME
Uses the contents of the named file for the specified subcommand, though different subcommands do different things with this content. For example, svn commit uses the content as a commit log, whereas svn propset uses it as a property value.
--force
Forces a particular command or operation to run. Subversion will prevent you from performing some operations in normal usage, but you can pass the force option to tell Subversion “I know what I'm doing as well as the possible repercussions of doing it, so let me at 'em.” This option is the programmatic equivalent of doing your own electrical work with the power on—if you don't know what you're doing, you're likely to get a nasty shock.
--force-log
Forces a suspicious parameter passed to the
--message (-m) or
--file (-F) option to
be accepted as valid. By default, Subversion will
produce an error if parameters to these options look
like they might instead be targets of the subcommand.
For example, if you pass a versioned file's path to the
--file (-F) option,
Subversion will assume you've made a mistake, that the
path was instead intended as the target of the
operation, and that you simply failed to provide some
other—unversioned—file as the source of your
log message. To assert your intent and override these
types of errors, pass the --force-log
option to subcommands that accept log messages.
--help (-h) or
-?)
If used with one or more subcommands, shows the built-in help text for each. If used alone, it displays the general client help text.
--ignore-ancestry
Tells Subversion to ignore ancestry when calculating differences (rely on path contents alone).
--ignore-externals
Tells Subversion to ignore externals definitions and the external working copies managed by them.
--incremental
Prints output in a format suitable for concatenation.
--keep-changelists
Tells Subversion not to delete changelists after committing.
--keep-local
Keeps the local copy of a file or directory (used with the svn delete command).
--limit (-l)
NUM
Shows only the first NUM
log messages.
--message (-m)
MESSAGE
Indicates that you will specify either a log message or a lock comment on the command line, following this option. For example:
$ svn commit -m "They don't make Sunday."
--new ARG
Uses ARG as the newer
target (for use with svn diff).
--no-auto-props
Disables auto-props, overriding the
enable-auto-props directive in the
config file.
--no-diff-deleted
Prevents Subversion from printing differences for deleted files. The default behavior when you remove a file is for svn diff to print the same differences that you would see if you had left the file but removed all the content.
--no-ignore
Shows files in the status listing that would
normally be omitted since they match a pattern in the
global-ignores configuration option
or the svn:ignore property. See the section called “Config” and the section called “Ignoring Unversioned Items” for more
information.
--no-unlock
Tells Subversion not to automatically unlock files (the default commit behavior is to unlock all files listed as part of the commit). See the section called “Locking” for more information.
--non-recursive (-N)
Deprecated. Stops a subcommand from recursing into subdirectories. Most subcommands recurse by default, but some subcommands—usually those that have the potential to remove or undo your local modifications—do not.
--notice-ancestry
Pays attention to ancestry when calculating differences.
--old ARG
Uses ARG as the older
target (for use with svn diff).
--parents
Creates and adds nonexistent or nonversioned parent subdirectories to the working copy or repository as part of an operation. This is useful for automatically creating multiple subdirectories where none currently exist. If performed on a URL, all the directories will be created in a single commit.
--quiet (-q)
Requests that the client print only essential information while performing an operation.
--record-only
Marks revisions as merged, for use with
--revision
(-r).
--recursive (-R)
Makes a subcommand recurse into subdirectories. Most subcommands recurse by default.
--reintegrate
Used with the svn merge subcommand, merges all of the source URL's changes into the working copy. See the section called “Keeping a Branch in Sync” for details.
--relocate FROM TO
[PATH...]
Used with the svn switch subcommand, changes the location of the repository that your working copy references. This is useful if the location of your repository changes and you have an existing working copy that you'd like to continue to use. See svn switch for an example.
--remove
ARG
Disassociates ARG from a
changelist
--revision (-r)
REV
Indicates that you're going to supply a revision (or range of revisions) for a particular operation. You can provide revision numbers, keywords, or dates (in curly braces) as arguments to the revision option. If you wish to offer a range of revisions, you can provide two revisions separated by a colon. For example:
$ svn log -r 1729
$ svn log -r 1729:HEAD
$ svn log -r 1729:1744
$ svn log -r {2001-12-04}:{2002-02-17}
$ svn log -r 1729:{2002-02-17}
See the section called “Revision Keywords” for more information.
--revprop
Operates on a revision property instead of a
property specific to a file or directory. This option
requires that you also pass a revision with the
--revision (-r)
option.
--set-depth
ARG
Sets the sticky depth on a directory in a working
copy to one of empty,
files, immediates,
or infinity.
--show-revs ARG
Used to make svn mergeinfo
display either merged
or eligible revisions.
--show-updates (-u)
Causes the client to display information about which files in your working copy are out of date. This doesn't actually update any of your files—it just shows you which files will be updated if you then use svn update.
--stop-on-copy
Causes a Subversion subcommand that traverses the history of a versioned resource to stop harvesting that historical information when a copy—that is, a location in history where that resource was copied from another location in the repository—is encountered.
--strict
Causes Subversion to use strict semantics, a notion that is rather vague unless talking about specific subcommands (namely, svn propget).
--targets
FILENAME
Tells Subversion to get the list of files that you wish to operate on from the filename that you provide instead of listing all the files on the command line.
--use-merge-history
(-g)
Uses or displays additional information from merge history.
--verbose (-v)
Requests that the client print out as much information as it can while running any subcommand. This may result in Subversion printing out additional fields, detailed information about every file, or additional information regarding its actions.
--version
Prints the client version info. This information
includes not only the version number of the client, but
also a listing of all repository access modules that the
client can use to access a Subversion repository.
With --quiet (-q) it
prints only the version number in a compact form.
--with-all-revprops
Used with the --xml option to svn log,
will retrieve and display all revision
properties in the log output.
--with-revprop
ARG
When used with any command that writes to the
repository, sets the revision property, using the
NAME=VALUE format,
NAME to
VALUE. When used with
svn log in --xml mode, this displays the value of
ARG in the log output.
--xml
Prints output in XML format.
Here are the various subcommands for the svn program. For the sake of brevity, we omit the global options (described in the section called “svn Options”) from the subcommand descriptions which follow.
[58] Well, you don't need a subcommand to use the
--version option, but we'll get to that in
just a minute.