Update svn checkout to specific date including externals

Question

I want to perform an svn update to a specific date, and I can do this with svn update -r {2010-10-17}. Unfortunately when this encounters an external it will do the update within the external without passing through the -r {2010-10-17} option. This results in us getting the correct past revision of the base code, but the latest (undesired) versions of many of the externals.

How can I update to a specific revision or date and have this recurse correctly through the externals?

(Note: I understand that the mistake here might have been to use externals with no explicit revisions specified.)

Explosive

Did you see this: #684216 – Kissiah

Answer 1

I hope, anybody will implement my common-sense logic (limited to directory-type externals in some areas) into bash and cmd-script sooner or later and we'll get "definitive answer" to this repeating question

Your base task is:

• svn up your super-repo to needed point in past (updating to date /and without time/ is, BTW, not a best choice, but - apllicable)
• get list of paths to all externals in your project (because externals definitions can exist anywhere in tree), from WC-root svn propget svn:externals -R (-R in order to check the whole tree without a lot of cd)
• for each string in propget output (with format like this . - https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/subversion-trouble-shooting/trunk/lib lib): cd to the last field of string /relative to the first field, which is, in turn, is relative path to root/ and svn up to the same point, as it was done for superrepo: svn update -r {2010-10-17}

As result you'll have Mixed Working Copy, but superrepo and externals will be in state "for some revision in the past"

Note:

Additional sample for constructing local path to directory with externals (nested WC really) on more complex case.

For

>svn propget svn:externals -R
tags\1.0.1 - -r 2 https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/subversion-trouble-shooting/trunk/lib@2 lib

trunk - https://subversion.assembla.com/svn/subversion-trouble-shooting/trunk/lib lib

finals paths to externals in my WC will be (relative to WC-root)

tags\1.0.1\lib
trunk\lib

Monopteros

Answer 2

I'm adding this answer in case anyone's trying to update an already-checked-out subversion repository to sync the local file dates to the repo dates, which I wanted to do so I could do FS timestamp comparisons.

I made this oneliner to do the trick (but read the line below before using it):

svn info --show-item last-changed-date -R | xargs -I{} -P1000 -n1 sh -c 'x="{}"; set -x; exec touch -d "${x%% *}" "${x#* }"'

NOTE: The -P1000 specifies that xargs should run 1000 simultaneous copies of sh and touch to do the actual updating. Depending on system load it may be wise to lower this. On a tiny i3-based Intel NUC 1000 processes actually turned out to be perfect, using 80-95% CPU (100% generally means the CPU is overloaded). If in doubt, open eg htop and test with different values - but only run it for a few seconds, because it will need to run from the start each time.

For a small ~3GB SVN repo on a USB HDD, this took about 5 minutes to run.

The set +x turns on verbose execution, which I do just before executing touch so you can watch it run. If you want non-verbose execution, remove that command.

Dwelling

Answer 3

We include only whole dirs in other projects:

• mainprj/bin/subprj1
• mainprj/bin/subprj2
• mainprj/dat/subprj1
• mainprj/dat/subprj2
• subprj1/bin # included in mainprj/bin/subprj1
• subprj1/dat # included in mainprj/dat/subprj1
• subprj2/bin # included in mainprj/bin/subprj2
• subprj2/dat # included in mainprj/dat/subprj2

with this layout svn propget svn:externals -R returns

# cd mainprj
# svn propget svn:externals -R
bin - subprj1 svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/subprj1/trunk/bin
subprj2 svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/subprj2/trunk/bin

dat - subprj1 svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/subprj1/trunk/dat
subprj2 svn+ssh://svnserver/svn/subprj2/trunk/dat

and you can update to a fix date as follows:

svn propget svn:externals -R |\ 
   grep -vE '^$' | sed -e "s/^[^-]* - //" |\
   while read line; do \
      pushd ${line##*/}; \
         svn update -r {2019-04-26} ${line%% *}; \
      popd; \
   done

Rembert

Answer 4

As far as I've been able to work out, you can't do this without changing your externals config. But, changing the externals config changes it for everyone, so it's just a single commit and update and you're done.

Endomorph

Can you explain what an "externals config" is? Do you mean the svn:externals property? If you mean that our externals properties should all use explicit revision numbers, then yes I might agree with you, but I can't go back and edit the many commits for which this wasn't the case. Perhaps I misunderstand your suggestion. – Explosive

Sorry, yeah, the svn:externals property. You only have that in one or two places right? Although, now rereading your question, you want to be going back in time, which will reset the svn:externals property too. So yes, you should have used explicit revisions on your externals, and now you're going to have to do it manually :) – Endomorph