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The Joel on Software Discussion Group (CLOSED)

Hi,

I have recently installed viewvc for our subversion repository, which is pretty nice. But I have discovered that some revisions seem to have a wrong date...


It has become clear to me that at one point the server's date has been set a few years back and about a 100 checkins have been done using this faulty date. After these 100 checkins the date returned to normal...

Does anybody know a way to alter the dates of revisions in a subversion repository?

Or is this really impossible? FYI: the repository is about half a gigabyte big

Okay, I might have found a solution for my problem :oP

I can find the revision numbers and dates in clear text in the dumpfile of the repository. I reckon it should in theory be possible to just change the dates of those 100 revisions and import the altered dump file...


I will give it a try :o)

Since you have hopefully solved your problems by yourself, this looks like a good time to hijack this thread.

I'd never heard of viewvc before.  It looks interesting.  I can see Unix only people using it, but is there any reason for TortoiseSVN users to use viewvc?

what is subversion. how does that enhance your code?

Are you saying Google did not give you any hits?

obvious, but i though i might as well add that before you hack the repository you should back it up.

In theory I'm merely hacking the dumpfile :oP (of which I have original copies since this repository is backed up every day automatically)


But thanks for reminding me anyway! ;o)

FYI, you can change the date, author, or log message on a revision WITHOUT having to do a dump/reload.  That information is stored in the repository as "revision properties", which can be modified from the command line.

Use 'svn propget svn:date --revprop -r REVNUM URL' to get the commit date for a revision.

Use 'svn propset' to change it.

It's not a builk operation.  You will need to do a propget/propset for each revision individually.  I'm sure you could easily script it with Python, though.

NOTE:  You may need to change your pre-revprop-change hook script to allow access to change this revision property.  By default, it is blocked.

>>Use 'svn propget svn:date --revprop -r REVNUM URL' to get the commit date for a revision.

how intuitive!

"how intuitive!" - suckers

There are 2 other (more easy) ways to get the revision date for you VSS users :oP

1.) svnlook date -r REVNUM PATH
2.) use one of the many front ends

SUBVERSION RULEZ!!!



Myron,

Thanks! I just discoverd that today and it's working fine! Beats editing the dumpfile by a factor 10 :o)


Thanks for sharing...