I am trying to determine when a specific function was added to one of our classes. We have a full history going back to 2005 in SVN.
Can I search for a specific word in a specific SVN file to find all versions containing that word? Then I will know the first one in the list was the original implementation and thus, who wrote it.
You can use Blame function in TortoiseSVN.
When you find your piece of text in the Blame window, you can ‘Blame previsous revision’ and, doing so recursively, navigate to the first revision that added that piece of text.