Is it possible in SVN to run
svn update
svn diff
and get an output from svn diff, without getting any conflicts in the update stage?
In particular, I have an empty file in the svn directory. On the server it’s a long and complicated file. svn diff-ing shows me that all the lines in this file were erased; however, svn updating changes nothing. What should I do to restore the file and all the other files like it?
It’s hard to follow your question given that you aren’t using Subversion’s terminology, but if you want to discard uncommitted changes in your working copy you need to use the revert subcommand.