SVNBOOK Chap2 Basic Work Cycle Undoing Working Changes

Suppose while viewing the output of svn diff you determine that all the changes you made to a particular file are mistakes. Maybe you shouldn't have changed the file at all, or perhaps it would be easier to make different changes starting from scratch. This is a perfect opportunity to use svn revert:

$ svn revert README
Reverted 'README'

Subversion reverts the file to its pre-modified state by overwriting it with the cached “pristine” copy from the .svn area. But also note that svn revert can undo any scheduled operations—for example, you might decide that you don't want to add a new file after all:

$ svn status foo
?      foo

$ svn add foo
A         foo

$ svn revert foo
Reverted 'foo'

$ svn status foo
?      foo

svn revert ITEM has exactly the same effect as deleting ITEM from your working copy and then running svn update -r BASE ITEM. However, if you're reverting a file, svn revert has one very noticeable difference—it doesn't have to communicate with the repository to restore your file.

Or perhaps you mistakenly removed a file from version control:

$ svn status README
       README

$ svn delete README
D         README

$ svn revert README
Reverted 'README'

$ svn status README
       README