Find the new location of an old file after a svn move

Question

Is there any way to have a known directory or file.....from an older revision....and then (knowing it has been "moved" at a later time) find out to where it was moved?

Example.

https:\\myserver.com\Repository1\OldFolderStructure\Folder01\FolderA\MyFile01.txt

(this structure/file exists at revision 333)

........

svn mkdir "https:\\myserver.com\Repository1\NewFolderStructure\"

svn move "https:\\myserver.com\Repository1\OldFolderStructure\Folder01" "https:\\myserver.com\Repository1\NewFolderStructure" 

svn ls "https:\\myserver.com\Repository1\NewFolderStructure\Folder01"

.......... (now pretend there are 1,000+ other check ins, but no more svn moves), so I jump to revision 1444.) ..........

So now, if I check out revision 333, I have this file "MyFile01.txt" (or folder "FolderA"). And I'm trying to figure out to where it exists in the HEAD revision.

You might be thinking, "why does he need this?" I wish I didn't. But it'd take me a 30 minutes to give you that revision history. (<< bad joke).

.........EDIT..............

So a few extra things.

One: svn info never gave me enough info to find the new home. The main reason for this was nesting of directories. I svn move some folders, but that folder has several subfolders that are nested at more than 1 level.

However, with svn diff, while I get alot of information (between revisions 1444 and 333)...the info is there. I mean, the svn diff task takes like 33 seconds, but once it comes back, I have the information in xml, and I am parsing it and putting it in some simple DTO objects.

Two (same file name issue):

If the original location of my item was:

https://mySvnServer.com/Repo1/SoccerClubWebSite/scripts/validationRoutines.js

and then I do a svn diff (detailed), and I have the following two items in the HEAD revision:

<path props="none" kind="file" item="add">https://mySvnServer.com/Repo1/WebSites/SoccerClubWebSite/scripts/validationRoutines.js</path>
<path props="none" kind="file" item="add">https://mySvnServer.com/Repo1/WebSites/CriticalBusinessAppWebSite/scripts/validationRoutines.js</path>

I encountered a few places where my filenames are not unique.

So I had to write a Uri Segment Matcher that tries to find matches.....by working the Uri backwards.

Example. In the 2 above items....I first try the last segment of the URI.

validationRoutines.js

I have 2 matches on that string. Thus I don't know the exact one I'm concerned about. I grab the parents folder and use that.

scripts/validationRoutines.js

still two matches.

Now I add the third uri segment (working right to left)

SoccerClubWebSite/scripts/validationRoutines.js

and now I found a unique match.

So the basic template of what I am now doing is:

(1) svn diff 333:HEAD

(fyi, this gives back ALOT of information).

(2) parse the xml and push it to simple DTO objects.

(3) look for items in that xml that are "add" or "modified", and use a matching system based on the segment logic listed above.

(3b) Because the same file could have been modified multiple times (and thus show up in the xml more than once (but with the same head svn-path)...I had to do a GROUP BY (svn-path). LINQ group by worked well here.

I still need to test my logic against some more examples. But YOUCH, this was not trivial.

mliebelt · Answer 1 · 2013-03-04T06:40:37.093

What you normally do is to use the TortoiseSVN log viewer for that. Do the following steps:

Open on a directory where you are sure that the file was in or is now in. In the worst case, start with the root (as in your example).
Type into the search box parts of the file name, and keep in mind, that this is a regular expression. So for searching MyFile01.txt, type in MyFile01\.txt (with the backslash before the . to ensure that the point is taken as character, not for any character).
The log viewer lists now all revisions that have something to do with your file. You should see now immediately the move of the file, the file name itself is highlighted in red. The move itself is shown in the dialog as a delete combined with an add (Subversion has no status of moved).

I have made an example, with a file readme.txt, this resulting dialog (after creating, and moving the file) looks like that:

enter image description here

As you can see, the highlighted text (in red) shows for the selected edition the removed file (last line) and the added file (second line), which is the way TortoiseSVN shows a move.

See the Filtering Log Messages in the documentation for details.

There is something similar possible by using svn log command (see the documentation gives you the first part:

filtering by date and directory
the second one (filtering by match in the log message or file name) you have to get by e.g. grep command in Unix / Linux / MacOS X. So that depends on your operating system (Windows?) and your skills with the shell.

Thanks for the input. Is there a command line version of this? Or is that a tortoise-gui only thing? — granadaCoder, Mar 01 '13 at 18:35
For `svn mv` TSVN will not show any files in log window - you have **broken history-line** for file here (in Tortoise) — Lazy Badger, Mar 04 '13 at 04:48

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 04 '13 at 05:11

For CLI it's more handwork (or gawk+grep+... or parsing XML)

Some iterations around CLI.

Story about hello.txt, which was born in trunk, and about his life in branch with pictures and comments

svn log http://mayorat.ursinecorner.ru:8088/svn/Hello/branches/i18n/ -v --stop-on-copy -q
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r25 | lazybadger | 2010-09-14 20:59:35 +0600 (Вт, 14 сен 2010)
Changed paths:
   D /branches/i18n/Beaujour.txt
   A /branches/i18n/Buongiornor.txt (from /branches/i18n/Beaujour.txt:24)
   A /branches/i18n/Goededag.txt (from /branches/i18n/GuterTag.txt:24)
   D /branches/i18n/GuterTag.txt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r23 | lazybadger | 2010-07-17 06:05:00 +0600 (Сб, 17 июл 2010)
Changed paths:
   A /branches/i18n/Beaujour.txt (from /branches/i18n/Hello.fr.txt:22)
   A /branches/i18n/GuterTag.txt (from /branches/i18n/Hello.de.txt:20)
   D /branches/i18n/Hello.de.txt
   D /branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt
   D /branches/i18n/Hello.fr.txt
   A /branches/i18n/Hello.txt (from /branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt:20)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r20 | lazybadger | 2010-07-17 05:23:59 +0600 (Сб, 17 июл 2010)
Changed paths:
   A /branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt (from /branches/i18n/Hello.txt:19)
   D /branches/i18n/Hello.txt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r19 | lazybadger | 2010-07-17 05:22:16 +0600 (Сб, 17 июл 2010)
Changed paths:
   A /branches/i18n/Hello.de.txt
   A /branches/i18n/Hello.fr.txt
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r18 | lazybadger | 2010-07-17 05:11:40 +0600 (Сб, 17 июл 2010)
Changed paths:
   A /branches/i18n (from /trunk:17)
------------------------------------------------------------------------

r18 - /trunk/hello.txt now must be identified as /branches/i18n/hello.txt (in Changed paths strings "from /trunk" detected)

r20 - according to "from /branches/i18n/Hello.txt" filename is /branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt

r23 - according to "from /branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt" filename returned to /branches/i18n/Hello.txt

XML-version

>svn log http://mayorat.ursinecorner.ru:8088/svn/Hello/branches/i18n/ -v -q --xml -r 18 -r 20 -r 23
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<log>
<logentry
   revision="18">
<author>lazybadger</author>
<date>2010-07-16T23:11:40.388125Z</date>
<paths>
<path
   action="A"
   prop-mods="true"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="dir"
   copyfrom-path="/trunk"
   copyfrom-rev="17">/branches/i18n</path>
</paths>
</logentry>
<logentry
   revision="20">
<author>lazybadger</author>
<date>2010-07-16T23:23:59.075625Z</date>
<paths>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   action="D">/branches/i18n/Hello.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   copyfrom-path="/branches/i18n/Hello.txt"
   copyfrom-rev="19"
   action="A">/branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt</path>
</paths>
</logentry>
<logentry
   revision="23">
<author>lazybadger</author>
<date>2010-07-17T00:05:00.997500Z</date>
<paths>
<path
   prop-mods="true"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   copyfrom-path="/branches/i18n/Hello.fr.txt"
   copyfrom-rev="22"
   action="A">/branches/i18n/Beaujour.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   copyfrom-path="/branches/i18n/Hello.de.txt"
   copyfrom-rev="20"
   action="A">/branches/i18n/GuterTag.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   copyfrom-path="/branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt"
   copyfrom-rev="20"
   action="A">/branches/i18n/Hello.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   action="D">/branches/i18n/Hello.en.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   action="D">/branches/i18n/Hello.fr.txt</path>
<path
   prop-mods="false"
   text-mods="false"
   kind="file"
   action="D">/branches/i18n/Hello.de.txt</path>
</paths>
</logentry>
</log>

In path node check copyfrom-path for filename or dir and inside the same node action="A" parameter for new filename. Not a big job for good XML-tree parser, but I'll prefer plain text and eyes

Thanks. This confirms what I started on late Friday after I posted this question. I already have some xml parsing happening in another part.......so that's the road I'm heading down. I ~~think the premise is that I still have to get the HEAD revision....and look for some key tags going backwards. But (in my case), I'll just have a LOT of unneeded xml that I ignore (all the changes from revision 334 to 1444)......but I don't think I have a choice. I'll update later, this is on my plate today. — granadaCoder, Mar 04 '13 at 14:59
@granadaCoder - if you must to identify "who is now this old file", you can do nothing with anything in HEAD - you know only OLDNAME@OLDREV — Lazy Badger, Mar 05 '13 at 04:04

Find the new location of an old file after a svn move

2 Answers2