How do I compare a branch against trunk in subversion?

Question

In Subversion, I created a branch from a trunk using svn copy. According to the the SVN 1.5 manual, "This is the easiest way to “tag” a revision in your repository—just svn copy that revision (usually HEAD) into your tags directory."

svn copy file:////svn/projectX/trunk file:///svn/projectX/branches/stefanl 

Then, I make my modifications to the stefanl branch. I want to commit my changes to the trunk, but before I do that I would like to see a diff of the changes.

How can I diff the 'stefanl' branch against the 'trunk' branch? I tried svn diff, but it didn't provide much information:

% svn diff file:////svn/projectX/trunk file:///svn/projectX/branches/stefanl Property changes on: . ___________________________________________________________________ Modified: svn:mergeinfo    Reverse-merged /trunk:r1699-1870 

Answer 1

Adding to the previous answers (if using Tortoise SVN on Windows):

• Right-click any folder. From the context menu, select TortoiseSVN -> Repo-browser.
• Enter your repo address in the URL box.
• Navigate to the first folder which you want to compare. Right-click and select Mark for comparison.
• Navigate to the second folder. Right-click and select Compare URLs

Answer 2

You can Unix diff to compare directories.

To find missing files:

diff -r svn/projectX/trunk svn/projectX/branches/stefanl | grep -i only 

To find what the differences between files:

diff -ru svn/projectX/trunk svn/projectX/branches/stefanl 

I had the same question and found the suggestion in a mail thread: http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2003-08/0538.shtml