Tortoise SVN Repo-Browser

Question

I was wondering if I right click on a file in the SVN repo browser, does it get permanently deleted? can it be recovered?

Answer 1

This question/answer from the SVN FAQ might interest you :

How do I completely remove a file from the repository's history?

There are special cases where you might want to destroy all evidence of a file or commit. (Perhaps somebody accidentally committed a confidential document.) This isn't so easy, because Subversion is deliberately designed to never lose information. Revisions are immutable trees which build upon one another. Removing a revision from history would cause a domino effect, creating chaos in all subsequent revisions and possibly invalidating all working copies.

The project has plans, however, to someday implement an svnadmin obliterate command which would accomplish the task of permanently deleting information. (See issue 516.)

In the meantime, your only recourse is to svnadmin dump your repository, then pipe the dumpfile through svndumpfilter (excluding the bad path) into an svnadmin load command.

If it's that hard, there are little chances it can be done easily from Tortoise SVN...
(And it's not the goal of Source Control...)

Answer 2

You'll find that you can only delete from the Repo Browser when you are viewing the HEAD revision. This is identical to deleting a file from your working copy and then checking in the delete. In both cases, you'll be able to restore from the previous revision.