Subversion Quick-reference

Field G. Van Zee
last updated on 2 March 2006


All material from this site was collected from the official Subversion book website.
Please visit this page for more thorough discussions on version control using Subversion.



Recommended Reading

Here are some links to subsections of the Subversion book that have good information in them:

2.2    Versioning Models
2.3    Subversion in Action

3.3    Revisions: Numbers, Keywords, and Dates
3.4    Initial Checkout
3.5    Basic Work Cycle
3.6    Examining History
AA.   Subversion for CVS users



Common subcommands

A complete list of subversion client subcommands, see chapter 9 of the Subversion book.
For each subcommand below, click on the link for a detailed man-page-like discussion.


svn add

    svn add PATH...

Add files/directories to your working copy and schedule them for addition to the repository.


svn checkout

    svn checkout URL... [PATH]

Check out a working copy from a repository.


svn commit

    svn commit [PATH...]

Send changes from your working copy to the repository.


svn delete

    svn rm PATH...
    svn rm URL...

Delete an item from a working copy or the repository.


svn export

    svn export [-r REV] URL [PATH]
    svn export PATH1 PATH2

Export a clean directory tree. (Similar to checkout, but without administrative directories necessary to commit future changes.)


svn help

    svn help [SUBCOMMAND...]

Provides on-demand help.


svn log

    svn log [PATH]
    svn log URL [PATH...]

Display commit log messages.


svn move

    svn mv SRC DEST

Move a file or directory.


svn status

    svn status [PATH...]

Print the status of working copy files and directories.


svn update

    svn update [PATH...]

Update your working copy with any changes made to the repository since your last update (or initial checkout).