Before we proceed further, we should warn you that there's a lot of discussion of “changes” in the pages ahead. A lot of people experienced with version control systems use the terms “change” and “changeset” interchangeably, and we should clarify what Subversion understands as a changeset.

Everyone seems to have a slightly different definition of changeset, or at least a different expectation of what it means for a version control system to have one. For our purposes, let's say that a changeset is just a collection of changes with a unique name. The changes might include textual edits to file contents, modifications to tree structure, or tweaks to metadata. In more common speak, a changeset is just a patch with a name you can refer to.

In Subversion, a global revision number N names a tree in the repository: it's the way the repository looked after the Nth commit. It's also the name of an implicit changeset: if you compare tree N with tree N-1, you can derive the exact patch that was committed. For this reason, it's easy to think of revision N as not just a tree, but a changeset as well. If you use an issue tracker to manage bugs, you can use the revision numbers to refer to particular patches that fix bugs—for example, “this issue was fixed by r9238.” Somebody can then run svn log -r 9238 to read about the exact changeset that fixed the bug, and run svn diff -c 9238 to see the patch itself. And (as you'll see shortly) Subversion's svn merge command is able to use revision numbers. You can merge specific changesets from one branch to another by naming them in the merge arguments: passing -c 9238 to svn merge would merge changeset r9238 into your working copy.

Continuing with our running example, let's suppose that a week has passed since you started working on your private branch. Your new feature isn't finished yet, but at the same time you know that other people on your team continue to make important changes in the project's /trunk. It's in your best interest to replicate those changes to your own branch, just to make sure they mesh well with your changes. This is done by performing a sync merge—a merge operation designed to bring your branch up to date with any changes made to its ancestral parent branch since your branch was created.

	Tip
	Frequently keeping your branch in sync with the main development line helps prevent “surprise” conflicts when the time comes for you to fold your changes back into the trunk.

Subversion is aware of the history of your branch and knows when it split away from the trunk. To perform a sync merge, first make sure your working copy of the branch is “clean”—that it has no local modifications reported by svn status. Then simply run:

$ pwd
/home/user/my-calc-branch

$ svn merge ^/calc/trunk
--- Merging r345 through r356 into '.':
U    button.c
U    integer.c
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r345 through r356 into '.':
 U   .
$

This basic syntax—svn merge URL—tells Subversion to merge all changes which have not been previously merged from the URL to the current working directory (which is typically the root of your working copy). Notice that we're using the caret (^) syntax^[26] to avoid having to type out the entire /trunk URL. Also note the “Recording mergeinfo for merge…” notification. This tells you that the merge is updating the svn:mergeinfo property. We'll discuss both this property and these notifications later in this chapter, in the section called “Mergeinfo and Previews”.

	Tip
	In this book and elsewhere (Subversion mailing lists, articles on merge tracking, etc.) you will frequently come across the term mergeinfo. This is simply shorthand for the svn:mergeinfo property.

$ svn log -v -r 400 ^/branches/foo-feature
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r400 | carol | 2011-11-09 10:51:27 -0500 (Wed, 09 Nov 2011) | 1 line
Changed paths:
A /branch/b2 (from /trunk:399)

Create branch for the foo feature
------------------------------------------------------------------------

$ svn merge ^/trunk -r399:HEAD
--- Merging r400 through r556 into '.':
A    include/foo.h
U    src/main.c
A    src/foo.c
…

$ svn ci -m "Sync the foo-feature branch with ^/trunk through r556."
Sending        include/foo.h
…
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 557.

$ svn merge ^/trunk -r556:HEAD
…

After running the prior example, your branch working copy now contains new local modifications, and these edits are duplications of all of the changes that have happened on the trunk since you first created your branch:

$ svn status
 M      .
M       button.c
M       integer.c
$

At this point, the wise thing to do is look at the changes carefully with svn diff, and then build and test your branch. Notice that the current working directory (“.”) has also been modified; svn diff will show that its svn:mergeinfo property has been either created or modified. This is important merge-related metadata that you should not touch, since it is needed by future svn merge commands. (We'll learn more about this metadata later in the chapter.)

After performing the merge, you might also need to resolve some conflicts—just as you do with svn update—or possibly make some small edits to get things working properly. (Remember, just because there are no syntactic conflicts doesn't mean there aren't any semantic conflicts!) If you encounter serious problems, you can always abort the local changes by running svn revert . -R (which will undo all local modifications) and starting a long “what's going on?” discussion with your collaborators. If things look good, however, you can submit these changes into the repository:

$ svn commit -m "Merged latest trunk changes to my-calc-branch."
Sending        .
Sending        button.c
Sending        integer.c
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 357.
$

At this point, your private branch is now “in sync” with the trunk, so you can rest easier knowing that as you continue to work in isolation, you're not drifting too far away from what everyone else is doing.

$ cd my-calc-branch
$ svn diff -r 341:HEAD ^/calc/trunk > my-patch-file
$ svn patch my-patch-file
U         integer.c
$

Suppose that another week has passed. You've committed more changes to your branch, and your comrades have continued to improve the trunk as well. Once again, you want to replicate the latest trunk changes to your branch and bring yourself in sync. Just run the same merge command again!

$ svn merge ^/calc/trunk
svn: E195020: Cannot merge into mixed-revision working copy [357:378]; try up\
dating first
$

Well that was unexpected! After making changes to your branch over the past week you now find yourself with a working copy that contains a mixture of revisions (see the section called “Mixed-revision working copies”). With the release of Subversion 1.7 the svn merge subcommand disables merges into mixed-revision working copies by default. Without going into too much detail, this is because of limitations in the way merges are tracked by the svn:mergeinfo property (see the section called “Mergeinfo and Previews” for details). These limitations mean that merges into mixed-revision working copies can result in unexpected text and tree conflicts.^[27] We don't want any needless conflicts, so we update the working copy and then reattempt the merge.

$ svn up
Updating '.':
At revision 380.

$ svn merge ^/calc/trunk
--- Merging r357 through r380 into '.':
U    integer.c
U    Makefile
A    README
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r357 through r380 into '.':
 U   .
$

Subversion knows which trunk changes you previously replicated to your branch, so it carefully replicates only those changes you don't yet have. And once again, you build, test, and svn commit the local modifications to your branch.

In most of the examples in this chapter the merge target is the root directory of a branch (see the section called “What's a Branch?”). While this is a best practice, you may occasionally need to merge directly to some child of the branch root. This type of merge is called a subtree merge and the mergeinfo recorded to describe it is called subtree mergeinfo. There is nothing special about subtree merges or subtree mergeinfo. In fact there is really only one important point to keep in mind about these concepts: the complete record of merges to a branch may not be contained solely in the mergeinfo on the branch root. You may have to look to any subtree mergeinfo to get a full accounting. Fortunately Subversion does this for you and rarely will you need to concern yourself with it. A brief example will help explain:

# We need to merge r958 from trunk to branches/proj-X/doc/INSTALL,
# but that revision also affects main.c, which we don't want to merge:
$ svn log --verbose --quiet -r 958 ^/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r958 | bruce | 2011-10-20 13:28:11 -0400 (Thu, 20 Oct 2011)
Changed paths:
   M /trunk/doc/INSTALL
   M /trunk/src/main.c
------------------------------------------------------------------------

# No problem, we'll do a subtree merge targeting the INSTALL file
# directly, but first take a note of what mergeinfo exists on the
# root of the branch:
$ cd branches/proj-X

$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo --recursive
Properties on '.':
  svn:mergeinfo
    /trunk:651-652

# Now we perform the subtree merge, note that merge source
# and target both point to INSTALL:
$ svn merge ^/trunk/doc/INSTALL doc/INSTALL -c 958
--- Merging r958 into 'doc/INSTALL':
U    doc/INSTALL
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r958 into 'doc/INSTALL':
 G   doc/INSTALL

# Once the merge is complete there is now subtree mergeinfo on INSTALL:
$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo --recursive
Properties on '.':
  svn:mergeinfo
    /trunk:651-652
Properties on 'doc/INSTALL':
  svn:mergeinfo
    /trunk/doc/INSTALL:651-652,958

# What if we then decide we do want all of r958? Easy, all we need do is
# repeat the merge of that revision, but this time to the root of the
# branch, Subversion notices the subtree mergeinfo on INSTALL and doesn't
# try to merge any changes to it, only the changes to main.c are merged:
$ svn merge ^/subversion/trunk . -c 958
--- Merging r958 into '.':
U    src/main.c
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r958 into '.':
 U   .
--- Eliding mergeinfo from 'doc/INSTALL':
 U   doc/INSTALL

You might be wondering why INSTALL in the above example has mergeinfo for r651-652, when we only merged r958. This is due to mergeinfo inheritance, which we'll cover in the sidebar Mergeinfo Inheritance. Also note that the subtree mergeinfo on doc/INSTALL was removed, or “elided”. This is called mergeinfo elision and it occurs whenever Subversion detects redundant subtree mergeinfo.

Tip

Prior to Subversion 1.7, merges unconditionally updated all of the subtree mergeinfo under the target to describe the merge. For users with a lot of subtree mergeinfo this meant that relatively “simple” merges (e.g. one which applied a diff to only a single file) resulted in changes to every subtree with mergeinfo, even those that were not parents of the effected path(s). This caused some level of confusion and frustration. Subversion 1.7 addresses this problem by only updating the mergeinfo on subtrees which are parents of the paths modified by the merge (i.e. paths changed, added, or deleted by application of the difference, see the section called “Merge Syntax: Full Disclosure”). The one exception to this behavior regards the actual merge target; the merge target's mergeinfo is always updated to describe the merge, even if the applied difference made no changes.

What happens when you finally finish your work, though? Your new feature is done, and you're ready to merge your branch changes back to the trunk (so your team can enjoy the bounty of your labor). The process is simple. First, bring your branch into sync with the trunk again, just as you've been doing all along^[28]:

$ svn merge ^/calc/trunk
--- Merging r381 through r385 into '.':
U    button.c
U    README
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge of r381 through r385 into '.':
 U   .

$ # build, test, ...

$ svn commit -m "Final merge of trunk changes to my-calc-branch."
Sending        .
Sending        button.c
Sending        README
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 390.

Now, use svn merge with the --reintegrate option to replicate your branch changes back into the trunk. You'll need a working copy of /trunk. You can get one by doing an svn checkout, dredging up an old trunk working copy from somewhere on your disk, or using svn switch (see the section called “Traversing Branches”). Your trunk working copy cannot have any local edits or contain a mixture of revisions (see the section called “Mixed-revision working copies”). While these are typically best practices for merging anyway, they are required when using the --reintegrate option.

Once you have a clean working copy of the trunk, you're ready to merge your branch back into it:

$ pwd
/home/user/calc-trunk

$ svn update  # (make sure the working copy is up to date)
Updating '.':
At revision 390.

$ svn merge --reintegrate ^/calc/branches/my-calc-branch
--- Merging differences between repository URLs into '.':
U    button.c
U    integer.c
U    Makefile
--- Recording mergeinfo for merge between repository URLs into '.':
 U   .

$ # build, test, verify, ...

$ svn commit -m "Merge my-calc-branch back into trunk!"
Sending        .
Sending        button.c
Sending        integer.c
Sending        Makefile
Transmitting file data ..
Committed revision 391.

Congratulations, your branch-specific changes have now been merged back into the main line of development. Notice our use of the --reintegrate option this time around. The option is critical for reintegrating changes from a branch back into its original line of development—don't forget it! It's needed because this sort of “merge back” is a different sort of work than what you've done up until now. Previously, we were asking svn merge to grab the “next set” of changes from one line of development (the trunk) and duplicate them to another (your branch). This is fairly straightforward, and each time Subversion knows how to pick up where it left off. In our prior examples, you can see that first it merges the ranges 345:356 from trunk to branch; later on, it continues by merging the next contiguously available range, 356:380. When doing the final sync, it merges the range 380:385.

When merging your branch back to the trunk, however, the underlying mathematics are quite different. Your feature branch is now a mishmash of both duplicated trunk changes and private branch changes, so there's no simple contiguous range of revisions to copy over. By specifying the --reintegrate option, you're asking Subversion to carefully replicate only those changes unique to your branch. (And in fact, it does this by comparing the latest trunk tree with the latest branch tree: the resulting difference is exactly your branch changes!)

Keep in mind that the --reintegrate option is quite specialized in contrast to the more general nature of most Subversion subcommand options. It supports the use case described above, but has little applicability outside of that. Because of this narrow focus, in addition to requiring an up-to-date working copy^[29] with no mixed-revisions, it will not function in combination with most of the other svn merge options. You'll get an error if you use any non-global options but these: --accept, --dry-run, --diff3-cmd, --extensions, or --quiet.

Now that your private branch is merged to trunk, you may wish to remove it from the repository:

$ svn delete ^/calc/branches/my-calc-branch \
             -m "Remove my-calc-branch, reintegrated with trunk in r391."
Committed revision 392.

But wait! Isn't the history of that branch valuable? What if somebody wants to audit the evolution of your feature someday and look at all of your branch changes? No need to worry. Remember that even though your branch is no longer visible in the /branches directory, its existence is still an immutable part of the repository's history. A simple svn log command on the /branches URL will show the entire history of your branch. Your branch can even be resurrected at some point, should you desire (see the section called “Resurrecting Deleted Items”).

Once a --reintegrate merge is done from branch to trunk, the branch is no longer usable for further work. It's not able to correctly absorb new trunk changes, nor can it be properly reintegrated to trunk again. For this reason, if you want to keep working on your feature branch, we recommend destroying it and then re-creating it from the trunk:

$ svn delete http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/branches/my-calc-branch \
             -m "Remove my-calc-branch, reintegrated with trunk in r391."
Committed revision 392.

$ svn copy http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/trunk \
           http://svn.example.com/repos/calc/branches/my-calc-branch \
           -m "Recreate my-calc-branch from trunk@HEAD."
Committed revision 393.

There is another way of making the branch usable again after reintegration, without deleting the branch. See the section called “Keeping a Reintegrated Branch Alive”.

The basic mechanism Subversion uses to track changesets—that is, which changes have been merged to which branches—is by recording data in versioned properties. Specifically, merge data is tracked in the svn:mergeinfo property attached to files and directories. (If you're not familiar with Subversion properties, see the section called “Properties”.)

You can examine the property, just like any other:

$ cd my-calc-branch
$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo .
/trunk:341-390
$

	Warning
	While it is possible to modify svn:mergeinfo just as you might any other versioned property, we strongly discourage doing so unless you really know what you're doing.

	Tip
	The amount of svn:mergeinfo on a single path can get quite large, as can the output of a svn propget --recursive or svn proplist --recursive when dealing with large amounts of subtree mergeinfo, see the section called “Subtree Merges and Subtree Mergeinfo” . The formatted output produced by the --verbose option with either of these subcommands is often very helpful in these cases.

The svn:mergeinfo property is automatically maintained by Subversion whenever you run svn merge. Its value indicates which changes made to a given path have been replicated into the directory in question. In our previous example, the path which is the source of the merged changes is /trunk and the directory which has received the changes is /branches/my-calc-branch. Earlier versions of Subversion maintained the svn:mergeinfo property silently. You could still detect the changes, after a merge completed, with the svn diff or svn status subcommands, but the merge itself gave no indication when it changed the svn:mergeinfo property. This is no longer true in Subversion 1.7, which has several new notifications to alert you when a merge updates the svn:mergeinfo property. These notifications all begin with “--- Recording mergeinfo for” and appear at the end of the merge. Unlike other merge notifications, these don't describe the application of a difference to a working copy (see the section called “Merge Syntax: Full Disclosure”), but instead describe "housekeeping" changes made to keep track of what was merged.

Subversion also provides a subcommand, svn mergeinfo, which is helpful in seeing not only which changesets a directory has absorbed, but also which changesets it's still eligible to receive. This gives a sort of preview of which changes a subsequent svn merge operation would replicate to your branch.

$ cd my-calc-branch

# Which changes have already been merged from trunk to branch?
$ svn mergeinfo ^/calc/trunk
r341
r342
r343
…
r388
r389
r390

# Which changes are still eligible to merge from trunk to branch?
$ svn mergeinfo ^/calc/trunk --show-revs eligible
r391
r392
r393
r394
r395
$

The svn mergeinfo command requires a “source” URL (where the changes come from), and takes an optional “target” URL (where the changes merge to). If no target URL is given, it assumes that the current working directory is the target. In the prior example, because we're querying our branch working copy, the command assumes we're interested in receiving changes to /branches/mybranch from the specified trunk URL.

# What explicit mergeinfo exists on a branch?
$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo ^/branches/proj-X --recursive
/trunk:651-652

# What children does proj-X have?
$ svn list --recursive ^/branches/proj-X
doc/
doc/INSTALL
README
src/main.c

# Ask what revs were merged to a file with no explicit mergeinfo
$ svn mergeinfo ^/trunk/src/main.c ^/branches/proj-X/src/main.c
651
652

# The '*' decorator indicates non-inheritable mergeinfo
$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo ^/branches/proj-X
/trunk:651-652,758*

# Revision 758 is non-inheritable, but still applies to the path it is
# set on. Here the '*' decorator signals that r758 is only partially
# merged from trunk. 
$ svn mergeinfo ^/trunk ^/branches/proj-X
651
652
758*

# Revision 758 is not reported as merged because it is non-inheritable
# and applies only to ^/trunk
$ svn mergeinfo ^/trunk/src/main.c ^/branches/proj-X/src/main.c
651
652

With the release of Subversion 1.7, the svn mergeinfo subcommand can also account for subtree mergeinfo and non-inheritable mergeinfo. It accounts for subtree mergeinfo by use of the --recursive or --depth options, while non-inheritable mergeinfo is considered by default.

Let's say we have a branch with both subtree and non-inheritable mergeinfo:

$ svn propget svn:mergeinfo --recursive -v
# Non-inheritable mergeinfo
Properties on '.':
  svn:mergeinfo
    /trunk:651-652,758*
# Subtree mergeinfo
Properties on 'doc/INSTALL':
  svn:mergeinfo
    /trunk/doc/INSTALL:651-652,958,1060

From the above mergeinfo we see that r758 has only been merged into the root of the branch, but not any of the root's children. We also see that both r958 and r1060 have been merged only to the doc/INSTALL file. When we use svn mergeinfo with the --recursive option to see what has been merged from ^/trunk to this branch, we see two revisions are flagged with the * marker:

$ svn mergeinfo --show-revs=merged ^/trunk . --recursive
651
652
758*
958*
1060

The * indicates revisions that are only partially merged to the target in question (the meaning is the same if we are checking for eligible revisions). What this means in this example is that if we tried to merge r758 or r958 from ^/trunk then more changes would result. Likewise, because r1060 is not flagged with a *, we know that it only affects doc/INSTALL and that trying to merge it would have no result.^[30]

Another way to get a more precise preview of a merge operation is to use the --dry-run option:

$ svn merge ^/calc/trunk --dry-run
--- Merging r391 through r395 into 'branch':
U    integer.c

$ svn status
#  nothing printed, working copy is still unchanged.

The --dry-run option doesn't actually apply any local changes to the working copy. It shows only status codes that would be printed in a real merge. It's useful for getting a “high-level” preview of the potential merge, for those times when running svn diff gives too much detail.

Tip

After performing a merge operation, but before committing the results of the merge, you can use svn diff --depth=empty /path/to/merge/target to see only the changes to the immediate target of your merge. If your merge target was a directory, only property differences are displayed. This is a handy way to see the changes to the svn:mergeinfo property recorded by the merge operation, which will remind you about what you've just merged.

Of course, the best way to preview a merge operation is to just do it! Remember, running svn merge isn't an inherently risky thing (unless you've made local modifications to your working copy—but we already stressed that you shouldn't merge into such an environment). If you don't like the results of the merge, simply run svn revert . -R to revert the changes from your working copy and retry the command with different options. The merge isn't final until you actually svn commit the results.

An extremely common use for svn merge is to roll back a change that has already been committed. Suppose you're working away happily on a working copy of /calc/trunk, and you discover that the change made way back in revision 303, which changed integer.c, is completely wrong. It never should have been committed. You can use svn merge to “undo” the change in your working copy, and then commit the local modification to the repository. All you need to do is to specify a reverse difference. (You can do this by specifying --revision 303:302, or by an equivalent --change -303.)

$ svn merge -c -303 ^/calc/trunk
--- Reverse-merging r303 into 'integer.c':
U    integer.c
--- Recording mergeinfo for reverse merge of r303 into 'integer.c':
 U   A-branch

$ svn status
 M      .
M       integer.c

$ svn diff
…
# verify that the change is removed
…

$ svn commit -m "Undoing change committed in r303."
Sending        integer.c
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 350.

As we mentioned earlier, one way to think about a repository revision is as a specific changeset. By using the -r option, you can ask svn merge to apply a changeset, or a whole range of changesets, to your working copy. In our case of undoing a change, we're asking svn merge to apply changeset r303 to our working copy backward.

Keep in mind that rolling back a change like this is just like any other svn merge operation, so you should use svn status and svn diff to confirm that your work is in the state you want it to be in, and then use svn commit to send the final version to the repository. After committing, this particular changeset is no longer reflected in the HEAD revision.

Again, you may be thinking: well, that really didn't undo the commit, did it? The change still exists in revision 303. If somebody checks out a version of the calc project between revisions 303 and 349, she'll still see the bad change, right?

Yes, that's true. When we talk about “removing” a change, we're really talking about removing it from the HEAD revision. The original change still exists in the repository's history. For most situations, this is good enough. Most people are only interested in tracking the HEAD of a project anyway. There are special cases, however, where you really might want to destroy all evidence of the commit. (Perhaps somebody accidentally committed a confidential document.) This isn't so easy, it turns out, because Subversion was deliberately designed to never lose information. Revisions are immutable trees that 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.^[31]

The great thing about version control systems is that information is never lost. Even when you delete a file or directory, it may be gone from the HEAD revision, but the object still exists in earlier revisions. One of the most common questions new users ask is, “How do I get my old file or directory back?”

The first step is to define exactly which item you're trying to resurrect. Here's a useful metaphor: you can think of every object in the repository as existing in a sort of two-dimensional coordinate system. The first coordinate is a particular revision tree, and the second coordinate is a path within that tree. So every version of your file or directory is defined by a specific coordinate pair. (Remember the “peg revision” syntax—foo.c@224—mentioned back in the section called “Peg and Operative Revisions”.)

First, you might need to use svn log to discover the exact coordinate pair you wish to resurrect. A good strategy is to run svn log --verbose in a directory that used to contain your deleted item. The --verbose (-v) option shows a list of all changed items in each revision; all you need to do is find the revision in which you deleted the file or directory. You can do this visually, or by using another tool to examine the log output (via grep, or perhaps via an incremental search in an editor).

$ cd parent-dir
$ svn log -v
…
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r808 | joe | 2003-12-26 14:29:40 -0600 (Fri, 26 Dec 2003) | 3 lines
Changed paths:
   D /calc/trunk/real.c
   M /calc/trunk/integer.c

Added fast fourier transform functions to integer.c.
Removed real.c because code now in double.c.
…

In the example, we're assuming that you're looking for a deleted file real.c. By looking through the logs of a parent directory, you've spotted that this file was deleted in revision 808. Therefore, the last version of the file to exist was in the revision right before that. Conclusion: you want to resurrect the path /calc/trunk/real.c from revision 807.

That was the hard part—the research. Now that you know what you want to restore, you have two different choices.

One option is to use svn merge to apply revision 808 “in reverse.” (We already discussed how to undo changes in the section called “Undoing Changes”.) This would have the effect of re-adding real.c as a local modification. The file would be scheduled for addition, and after a commit, the file would again exist in HEAD.

In this particular example, however, this is probably not the best strategy. Reverse-applying revision 808 would not only schedule real.c for addition, but the log message indicates that it would also undo certain changes to integer.c, which you don't want. Certainly, you could reverse-merge revision 808 and then svn revert the local modifications to integer.c, but this technique doesn't scale well. What if 90 files were changed in revision 808?

A second, more targeted strategy is not to use svn merge at all, but rather to use the svn copy command. Simply copy the exact revision and path “coordinate pair” from the repository to your working copy:

$ svn copy ^/calc/trunk/real.c@807 ./real.c

$ svn status
A  +    real.c

$ svn commit -m "Resurrected real.c from revision 807, /calc/trunk/real.c."
Adding         real.c
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 1390.

The plus sign in the status output indicates that the item isn't merely scheduled for addition, but scheduled for addition “with history.” Subversion remembers where it was copied from. In the future, running svn log on this file will traverse back through the file's resurrection and through all the history it had prior to revision 807. In other words, this new real.c isn't really new; it's a direct descendant of the original, deleted file. This is usually considered a good and useful thing. If, however, you wanted to resurrect the file without maintaining a historical link to the old file, this technique works just as well:

$ svn cat ^/calc/trunk/real.c@807 > ./real.c

$ svn add real.c
A         real.c

$ svn commit -m "Re-created real.c from revision 807."
Adding         real.c
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 1390.

Although our example shows us resurrecting a file, note that these same techniques work just as well for resurrecting deleted directories. Also note that a resurrection doesn't have to happen in your working copy—it can happen entirely in the repository:

$ svn copy ^/calc/trunk/real.c@807 ^/calc/trunk/ \
           -m "Resurrect real.c from revision 807."
Committed revision 1390.

$ svn update
Updating '.':
A    real.c
Updated to revision 1390.