This documentation was written to describe Subversion 1.0. If you are running a newer version of Subversion, we strongly suggest that you visit http://www.svnbook.com/ and consult the version of this book appropriate for your version of Subversion.
svn switch — Update working copy to a different URL.
This subcommand updates your working copy to mirror a new URL—usually a URL which shares a common ancestor with your working copy, although not necessarily. This is the Subversion way to move a working copy to a new branch. See the section called “Switching a Working Copy” for an in-depth look at switching.
--revision (-r) REV --non-recursive (-N) --quiet (-q) --diff3-cmd CMD --relocate --username USER --password PASS --no-auth-cache --non-interactive --config-dir DIR
If you're currently inside the directory vendors which was branched to vendors-with-fix and you'd like to switch your working copy to that branch:
$ svn switch http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/branches/vendors-with-fix . U myproj/foo.txt U myproj/bar.txt U myproj/baz.c U myproj/qux.c Updated to revision 31.
And to switch back, just provide the URL to the location in the repository from which you originally checked out your working copy:
$ svn switch http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/trunk/vendors . U myproj/foo.txt U myproj/bar.txt U myproj/baz.c U myproj/qux.c Updated to revision 31.
You can just switch part of your working copy to a branch if you don't want to switch your entire working copy.
Sometimes an administrator might change the "base location" of your repository — in other words, the contents of the repository doesn't change, but the main URL used to reach the root of the repository does. For example, the hostname may change, or the URL schema, or perhaps just the path which leads to the repository. Rather than checkout a new working copy, you can have the svn switch command "rewrite" the the beginnings of all the URLs in your working copy. Use the --relocate command to do the substitution. No file contents are changed, nor is the repository contacted. It's similar to running a perl script over your working copy .svn/ directories which runs s/OldRoot/NewRoot/.
$ svn checkout file:///tmp/repos test A test/a A test/b … $ mv repos newlocation $ cd test/ $ svn update svn: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL svn: Unable to open repository 'file:///tmp/repos' $ svn switch --relocate file:///tmp/repos file:///tmp/newlocation . $ svn update At revision 3.