How to relocate a svn branch to different path

[prakash kumar sharma]

Hi,

I am using tortoise SVN and have below requirement:

1. Rename svn branch, but old logs should be visible as it was.
I renamed the branch with tortoise svn rename option. But old logs are not visible when stop on copy/name checkbox is selected.
When I unselect the checkbox then it shows logs from other branches, this is the problem.
Please let me know how can I rename a branch maintaining old logs in tortoise svn and check old logs of the same branch only after renaming.

2. Relocate a branch to another location, logs shouldn't be lost and only path of the branch should be changed in svn.
I don't found any option to move a branch to another location, please let me know, how I can do it in tortoise svn.

Thanks,

[Tim Holloway]

That's a good one, although by now you might want to consider migrating to git. SVN migrates fairly easily, although the history may give you a challenge. And git has more power (especially with branches!) in the long run. Maybe even use this branching to start a clean history under git and freeze the svn archive for posterity. In my experience, I rarely need to go back more than a few generations in history logs anyway and even the change records themselves can mostly be done as well using "diff" when comparing really old stuff.

SVN gained popularity over CVS because CVS didn't do well at renaming/deleting directories in a project and especially over generations. Git has gained popularity because it has very powerful branch management, plus the ability to do things without checking code out or even being online to a central server.

Tortoise supports git, by the way. As do most modern IDEs.

One of the things that limits SVN is that all branches of a project are located in a single central directory tree. In git, that's somewhat true, but the isolation between branches is higher, so that you can pull down only a single branch and work on it if you prefer or have several branches pulled into separate project directories; something that SVN cannot do at all.

I know. None of this helps you with your problems with SVN. Actually, I'm too far out of practice in SVN and my SVN archives are now frozen and haven't been referenced in years, so whatever I needed to to was done so long ago I forgot how. So I'm asking if you really want to keep SVN going forward long-term. It's not as well supported in public forums as it used to be.

Barring that, if you cannot attach historical log info to your branch, consider simply doing a dump of the logs to a text file and insert it into a text file in the branch.

Finally, though, what happens to history when you eventually merge the branch back into the mainline? And if you don't, then definitely git is better suited for you.

[Roland Mueller]

I am not using Turtoise but with command line 'svn move' the log history is still preserved for the moved entities.