This documentation was written to describe the 1.6.x series of Subversion. If you are running a different version of Subversion, you are strongly encouraged to visit http://www.svnbook.com/ and instead consult the version of this documentation appropriate for your version of Subversion.

High-level Logging

Both the Apache httpd and svnserve Subversion servers provide support for high-level logging of Subversion operations. Configuring each of the server options to provide this level of logging is done differently, of course, but the output from each is designed to conform to a uniform syntax.

To enable high-level logging in svnserve, you need only use the --log-file command-line option when starting the server, passing as the value to the option the file to which svnserve should write its log output.

$ svnserve -d -r /path/to/repositories --log-file /var/log/svn.log

Enabling the same in Apache is a bit more involved, but is essentially an extension of Apache's stock log output configuration mechanisms—see the section called “Apache logging” for details.

The following is a list of Subversion action log messages produced by its high-level logging mechanism, followed by one or more examples of the log message as it appears in the log output.

Checkout or export
checkout-or-export /path r62 depth=infinity
Commit
commit harry r100
Diffs
diff /path r15:20 depth=infinity ignore-ancestry
diff /path1@15 /path2@20 depth=infinity ignore-ancestry
Fetch a directory
get-dir /trunk r17 text
Fetch a file
get-file /path r20 props
Fetch a file revision
get-file-revs /path r12:15 include-merged-revisions
Fetch merge information
get-mergeinfo (/path1 /path2)
Lock
lock /path steal
Log
log (/path1,/path2,/path3) r20:90 discover-changed-paths revprops=()
Replay revisions (svnsync)
replay /path r19
Revision property change
change-rev-prop r50 propertyname
Revision property list
rev-proplist r34
Status
status /path r62 depth=infinity
Switch
switch /pathA /pathB@50 depth=infinity
Unlock
unlock /path break
Update
update /path r17 send-copyfrom-args

As a convenience to administrators who wish to post-process their Subversion high-level logging output (perhaps for reporting or analysis purposes), Subversion source code distributions provide a Python module (located at tools/server-side/svn_server_log_parse.py) which can be used to parse Subversion's log output.