Rolling back bad changes with svn in Eclipse

eclipse svn subclipse subversive
Juha Syrjälä picture Juha Syrjälä · Aug 30, 2008 · Viewed 100k times · Source

Let's say I have committed some bad changes to Subversion repository. Then I commit good changes, that I want to keep.

What would be easiest way to roll back those bad changes in Eclipse, and keep the good changes? Assuming that files relating to bad changes are not same as those relating to the good changes. How things change if good changes were made to same files as bad changes?

I am mostly looking a way to do this via Eclipse plugins (Subclipse or Subversive) but commandline commands are also interesting.

Answer

kirlich picture kirlich · Sep 15, 2008

In Eclipse Ganymede (Subclipse)

Select project/file that contains bad change, and from pop-up menu choose:

Team -> Show History

Revisions related to that project/file will be shown in History tab.

Find revision where "bad changes" were committed and from pop-up menu choose:

Revert Changes from Revision X

This will merge changes in file(s) modified within bad revision, with revision prior to bad revision.

There are two scenarios from here:

  1. If you committed no changes for that file (bad revision is last revision for that file), it will simply remove changes made in bad revision. Those changes are merged to your working copy so you have to commit them.

  2. If you committed some changes for that file (bad revision is not last revision for that file), you will have to manually resolve conflict. Let say that you have file readme.txt with, and bad revision number is 33. Also, you've made another commit for that file in revision 34. After you choose Revert Changes from Revision 33 you will have following in your working copy:

readme.txt.merge-left.r33 - bad revision

readme.txt.merge-right.r32 - before bad revision

readme.txt.working - working copy version (same as in r34 if you don't have any uncommitted changes)

Original readme.txt will be marked conflicted, and will contain merged version (where changes from bad revision are removed) with some markers (<<<<<<< .working etc). If you just want to remove changes from bad revision and keep changes made after that, then all you have to do is remove markers. Otherwise, you can copy contents from one of 3 files mentioned above to original file. Whatever you choose, when you are done, mark conflict resolved by

Team - Mark Resolved

Temporary files will be removed and your file will be marked changed. As in 1, you have to commit changes.

Note that this does not remove revision from revision history in svn repository. You simply made new revision where changes from bad revision are removed.

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