http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/
Examining History
Your Subversion repository is like a time machine. It keeps a record of every change ever committed and allows you to explore this history by examining previous versions of files and directories as well as the metadata that accompanies them. With a single Subversion command, you can check out the repository (or restore an existing working copy) exactly as it was at any date or revision number in the past. However, sometimes you just want to peer into the past instead of going into it.
Several commands can provide you with historical data from the repository:
- svn diff
- Shows line-level details of a particular change
- svn log
- Shows you broad information: log messages with date and author information attached to revisions and which paths changed in each revision
- svn cat
- Retrieves a file as it existed in a particular revision number and displays it on your screen
- svn annotate
- Retrieves a human-readable file as it existed in a particular revision number, displaying its contents in a tabular form with last-changed information attributed to each line of the file.
- svn list
- Displays the files in a directory for any given revision