Version log dialog box

For each modification and submission, you should leave specific log information. In this way, you can easily see what you have done and why. Of course, you still have detailed logs of the development process.

The version log dialog box displays all the log information. The view in the dialog box is divided into three panels.

• The top panel displays the version list. This includes the date and time, and the content starting with the submitted user and log information.

  Lines in blue indicate that some content is copied to the development version (possibly from a branch ).

• The middle panel displays the complete log information of the selected version.

• The bottom panel shows where files and folders are modified in the selected version.

Of course, a dialog box does not have to be used here-it provides a right-click menu to get more project history information.

Call version log dialog box

Figure 5.15. Version log dialog box

There are several ways to call up the log dialog box:

• From the tortoisesvn sub-menu in the right-click menu, call

• Call from the property page

• After the update is complete, it is called from the Progress dialog box. Here, the log dialog box only displays version changes since the last update.

Version Log action

The top panel has an action column that contains the action summary icon of this version. There are four different icons, each of which is displayed in its own column.

If a revision modified a file or directory,ModifiedIcon is shown in the first column.

If a revision added a file or directory,AddedIcon is shown in the second column.

If a revision deleted a file or directory,DeletedIcon is shown in the third column.

If a revision replaced a file or directory,ReplacedIcon is shown in the fourth column.

For more information

Figure 5.16. Right-click the top panel of the version log dialog box

The top pane of the log dialog has a context menu that allows you to access much more information. some of these menu entries appear only when the log is shown for a file, and some only when the log is shown for a folder.

• Compare your work version with the selected version. The default comparison tool is tortoisemerge released with tortoisesnv. If the log dialog box is for folders, a list of modified files appears, you can view the modifications made to each file separately.

• View the selected version as a single differential file (in the GNU patch format. It is harder to read than a visual file comparator, But it displays all the changes in a more compact file.

• Compare the selected and previous versions. It is similar to a working copy.

• Trace the selected version, compare the tracing report with your basic work file, and use the Visual Difference tool. For more information, see "trace differences ).

• Trace the selected version and old version, and compare the results with the Visual Difference tool (for the directory only ).

• Save the selected version to the file. You can get an old version of the file (only for files ).

• Use the default viewer of this file type, or open the selected file (only for files) in the specified program ).

• Trace the file to the selected version (only for files ).

• Open the version library browser and check the selected files or directories in the version Library Based on the selected version.

• Create a branch/tag from the selected version. This option is useful. For example, if you submit some changes that you don't want to bring to the release, you forget to mark them.

• Update your work copy to the selected version. If you want to migrate your work copy to a certain time in the past, this function is very useful. You 'd better update the entire directory of the working copy instead of a single file, because if you only update a file, your working copy may be inconsistent, So that you cannot submit any modifications.

• Restores the changes made to the selected version. The restored content is only in your working copy, so this operation is complete.NoAffected Version library! Note that this operation only restores the modifications in this version. Instead of replacing the entire file with the selected version. It is very useful for restoration of early changes that have already been made with other irrelevant changes. If you make a local modification, this command will merge and modify it to the working copy.

• Restore to a previous version. If you make multiple changes and decide to return to version n, you can use this command. Again, it indicates that the restored modification is in your work copy, andNoAffects the version library. Note that this will discardAllModify and replace the file/folder with the selected version.

• Merge the selected revision (s) into a different working copy. A folder selection dialog allows you to choose the working copy to merge into, but after that there is no confirmation diion, nor any opportunity to try a dry run. it is a good idea to merge into an unmodified working copy so that you can revert the changes if it doesn't work out! This is a useful feature if you want to merge selected revisions from one branch to another.

• Check the selected version of the selected directory and create a new copy. The pop-up dialog box shows you how to confirm the URL and version and select the saved location.

• Export the selected version of the selected file/directory. In the dialog box that appears, confirm the URL and version and select the export location.

• Edit the log information or author before submission. Read the "Modify Log message and author" section to learn how it works.

• Copy the detailed log information of the selected version to the clipboard. It copies the version number, author, date, log information, and the list of changed projects for each version.

• Search for the text you entered in the log information. This operation searches for log information, and also searches for the Submission behavior summary created by subversion (the content in the bottom panel ). The search is case-insensitive.

Figure 5.17. Right-click the top panel of the selected two versions

If you useCTRLThe key combination selects two versions at a time, and the right-click menu has changed:

• Use visual differences to compare the two selected versions. The default comparison is the tortoisemerge provided with tortoisesvn.

  If you select this option for folders, a dialog box will pop up to list the modified files and provide more comparison options. See the compare version dialog box for details: "compare Folders.

• Blame the two revisions and compare the blame reports using a visual difference tool. Read "difference tracing" for more detail.

• Use a single differential file to display the differences. This applies to files and folders.

• Copy the log message to the clipboard as described above.

• As described above, you can search for log messages.

If you select two or more revisions (using the usualCTRLOrShiftModifiers), the context menu will include an entry to revert all changes which were made in the selected revisions. This is the easiest way to rollback a group of revisions in one go.

You can also choose to merge the selected revisions to another working copy, as described above.

Figure 5.18. Right-click the bottom panel of the log dialog box

The bottom panel of the log dialog box also has a right-click menu. You can:

• Show changes made in the selected revision for the selected file. This context menu is only available for files shownModified.

• Blame the selected revision and the previous revision for the selected file, and compare the blame reports using a Visual diff tool. Read the "tracing differences" section for more detail.

• Use the default viewer or your specified program to open the selected version of the selected file.

• Restores the changes made to the selected version of the selected file.

• View the Subversion attribute of the selected item.

• Displays the version logs of the selected file.

• Save the selected version as a file and you will get an old version of the file.

Prompt

You may notice that we sometimes say "change" or "difference. Where are their differences?

Subversion uses revision numbers to mean 2 different things. A revision generally represents the state of the repository at a point in time, but it can also be used to represent the Changeset which created that revision, eg. "done in r1234" means that the changes committed in r1234 implement feature X. to make it clearer which sense is being used, we use two different terms.

If you select two versions N and m, the Context Menu displaysDifference. In terms of subversiondiff -r M:N.

If you select a version n, the Context Menu displays the versionChange. In terms of subversiondiff -r N-1:NOrdiff -c N.

The bottom pane shows the files changed in all selected revisions, so the context menu always offers to showChanges.

Get more log information

The log dialog box does not always display all previous changes. The possible reasons for not displaying logs are as follows:

• For a large database, there may be several hundred or thousands of changes. It may take a long time to get them all. Generally, you only care about the latest changes. By default, only 100 log messages are limited, but you can modify this value in tortoisesvn → settings ("tortoisesvn Settings ),

• When the Stop check box is selected during copy/rename, if the selected file or folder is copied from somewhere else in the version library, the log will be stopped at this point. This is useful when you view a branch (or tag) because it stops at the root node of the branch and allows you to quickly view its modifications.

  Generally, do not select it. Tortoisesvn remembers its status to improve performance.

  If you call the log display dialog box in the merge dialog box, this check box is always selected by default. This is because merge is usually used to view the changes in the branch. In this case, it usually makes no sense to obtain the logs before the branch root.

  Note that subversion is renamed using copy/Delete. Therefore, renaming a file or folder will also cause log display to stop (if copy/rename is selected, stop) at this point.

If you want to view more log information, click the next 100 to obtain the next 100 logs. You can repeat this operation multiple times if necessary.

This button is next to a multi-function button, which can remember the operation you performed last time. Click the arrow above it to see more options.

If you want to query the version of a specified range, use the display range .... In this dialog box, enter the start and end versions.

If you want to queryAllLog message. Use show all.

Merge tracking features

Subversion 1.5 and later keeps a record of merges using properties. this allows us to get a more detailed history of merged changes. for example, if you develop a new feature on a branch and then merge that branch back to trunk, the feature development will show up on the trunk log as a single commit for the merge, even though there may have been 1000 commits during branch development.

Figure 5.19. The log dialog box displays the merged trace version.

If you want to see the detail of which revisions were merged as part of that commit, use the include merged revisions checkbox. this will fetch the log messages again, but will also interleave the log messages from revisions which were merged. merged revisions are shown in gray because they represent changes made on a different part of the tree.

Of course, merging is never simple! During feature development on the branch there will probably be occasional merges back from trunk to keep the branch in sync with the main line code. so the merge history of the Branch will also include another layer of merge history. these different layers are shown in the log dialog using indentation levels.

Modify log messages and authors

Sometimes you may want to modify the log messages you have entered, maybe because of spelling errors, whether you want to improve the message content, or other reasons. Occasionally, you may want to modify the submitter because you forgot to set authentication.

Subversion lets you change both the log message and the author of revisions any time you want. but since such changes can't be undone (those changes are not versioned) This feature is disabled by default. to make this work, you must set up a pre-revprop-change hook. please refer to the chapter onHook scriptsIn the Subversion book for details about how to do that. Read the "hook script" section to find some further notes on implementing hooks on a Windows machine.

Once you set hooks for the server as needed, you can use the right-click menu on the top panel of the log dialog box to modify the author and log information of any version.

Warning

Because the version attribute of subversion is not controlled by version, modifications to this attribute (suchsvn:logThe submit information property willPermanentOverwrite the value before this attribute.

Filter log information

If you only want to display thousands of logs you are interested in, you can use the filter control at the top of the log dialog box. The start and end date controls allow you to view the output within the specified date range. The search box helps you find information that contains the specified content.

Click on the search icon to select which information you want to search in, and to chooseRegExMode. normally you will only need a simple text search, but if you need to more flexible search terms, you can use regular expressions. if you hover the mouse over the box, a tooltip will give hints on how to use the RegEx functions. you can also find online documentation and a tutorialHttp://www.regular-expressions.info/.

Note that these filters are only valid for the obtained information. They do not download information from the version library.

You can also filter the path names in the bottom pane using the hide unrelated changed paths checkbox. related paths are those which contain the path used to display the log. if you fetch the log for a folder, that means anything in that folder or below it. for a file it means just that one file. the checkbox is tristate: You can show all paths, gray out the unrelated ones, or hide the unrelated paths completely.

Sometimes your working practices will require log messages to follow a participant format, which means that the text describing the changes is not visible in the abbreviated summary shown in the top pane. The propertytsvn:logsummaryCan be used to extract a portion of the log message to be shown in the top pane. Read "tortoisesvn project attributes" section to find out how to use this property.

Statistics

The statistics button displays the version information about the log dialog box you are interested in. It can be shown that several authors have already done their work, each submitting several times, Weekly Statistics, and so on. Now, you can find a general situation: Who is the most diligent and who is lazy .; -)

Statistics page

This page provides all the data you can think of, especially the cycle and number of versions, as well as the Maximum/minimum/average values.

Author submission count statistics page

Figure 5.20. histogram of the number of times submitted by the author

This chart uses a simple bar chart, a Stacked column chart, or a pie chart to show which authors are active in the project.

Figure 5.21. Pie Chart of the number of times submitted by the author

Where there are a few major authors and lower minor contributors, the number of tiny segments can make the graph more difficult to read. the slider at the bottom allows you to set a threshold (as a percentage of total commits) below which any activity is grouped intoOthersCategory.

Submit statistics page by date

Figure 5.22. Submit a Statistical Chart by date

This page shows the number of submissionsAndProject Behavior Statistics by the author as a condition. We can see when someone is working in the project and when someone is working.

If there are multiple authors, you will see multiple rows in the figure. Two views availableNormal, Here, the behavior of each author is relative to the baseline;OverlayHere, the behavior of each author is relative to the line below him. The latter view avoids line crossover and is clearer for the graph, but it is not intuitive to view the output of an author.

By default the analysis is case-sensitive, so usersPeterEganAndPeteReganAre treated as different authors. However, in your cases user names are not case-sensitive, and are sometimes entered inconsistently, so you may wantDavidMorganAnddavidmorganTo be treated as the same person. Use the authors case insensitive checkbox to control how this is handled.

Note that the statistics only include the period in the log dialog box. If only one version is displayed in the log dialog box, statistics are meaningless.

Offline

If the server is not reachable, And you have log caching enabled you can use the log dialog and revision graph in offline mode. this uses data from the cache, which allows you to continue working although the information may not be up-to-date or even complete.

Refresh View

If you want to check the server again for newer log messages, you can simply refresh the view usingF5. If you are using the log cache (enabled by default), this will check the repository for newer messages and fetch only the new ones. if the log cache was in offline mode, this will also attempt to go back online.

If you are using the log cache and you think the message content or author may have changed, you can useShift-F5OrCtrl-F5To re-Fetch the displayed messages from the server and update the log cache. Note that this only affects messages currently shown and does not invalidate the entire cache for that repository.