Name

svn diff — Display the differences between two paths.

Synopsis

svn diff [-r N[:M]] [TARGET...]
svn diff URL1[@N] URL2[@M]

Description

Display the differences between two paths. Each TARGET can be either a working copy path or URL. If no TARGET is specified, a value of '.' is assumed.

If TARGET is a URL, then revs N and M must be given via the --revision.

If TARGET is a working copy path, then the --revision switch means:

--revision N:M

The server compares TARGET@N and TARGET@M.

--revision N

The client compares TARGET@N against working copy.

(no --revision)

The client compares base and working copies of TARGET.

If the alternate syntax is used, the server compares URL1 and URL2 at revisions N and M respectively. If either N or M are omitted, a value of HEAD is assumed.

By default, svn diff ignores the ancestry of files and merely compares the contents of the two files being compared. If you use --notice-ancestry, the ancestry of the paths in question will be taken into consideration when comparing revisions (that is, if you run svn diff on two files with identical contents but different ancestry you will see the entire contents of the file as having been removed and added again).

Alternate Names

di

Changes

Nothing

Accesses Repository

For obtaining differences against anything but BASE revision in your working copy

Switches

--revision (-r) REV
--old OLD-TARGET
--new NEW-TARGET
--extensions (-x) "ARGS"
--non-recursive (-N)
--diff-cmd CMD
--notice-ancestry
--username USER
--password PASS
--no-auth-cache
--non-interactive
--no-diff-deleted
--config-dir DIR
          

Examples

Compare BASE and your working copy (one of the most popular uses of svn diff):

$ svn diff COMMITTERS 
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
--- COMMITTERS	(revision 4404)
+++ COMMITTERS	(working copy)
          

See how your working copy's modifications compare against an older revision:

$ svn diff -r 3900 COMMITTERS 
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
--- COMMITTERS	(revision 3900)
+++ COMMITTERS	(working copy)
          

Compare revision 3000 to revision 3500 using '@' syntax:

$ svn diff http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/COMMITTERS@3000 http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/COMMITTERS@3500
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
--- COMMITTERS	(revision 3000)
+++ COMMITTERS	(revision 3500)
…
          

Compare revision 3000 to revision 3500 using range notation (you only pass the one URL in this case):

$ svn diff -r 3000:3500 http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/COMMITTERS
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
--- COMMITTERS	(revision 3000)
+++ COMMITTERS	(revision 3500)
          

If you have a working copy, you can obtain the differences without typing in the long URLs:

$ svn diff -r 3000:3500 COMMITTERS 
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
--- COMMITTERS	(revision 3000)
+++ COMMITTERS	(revision 3500)
          

Use --diff-cmd CMD -x to pass arguments directly to the external diff program

svn diff --diff-cmd /usr/bin/diff -x "-i -b" COMMITTERS 
Index: COMMITTERS
===================================================================
0a1,2
> This is a test
>