Question

Is there some way how to commit into the SVN repository with old time / date or how to edit the time / date post commit?

I have some archived sources which are very old, way before I have started using SVN, and I would now like to put them into the SVN and if possible to preserve their original date, so that SVN history matches the real date where files were edited.

Manipulating SVN server time is an obvious option, but it cannot be used here, as the SVN server is out of my control.

Answer 1

What I did eventually was:

• install VisualSVN server on my workstation
• create a new “local” SVN repository
• take archives one by one, for each:
  • in the working copy delete everything but .svn file, to make sure files which were deleted are not left over
  • decompress the archive into the working copy
  • change system date to the date of the archive
  • add and delete as necessary and commit into the local repository
• once done, use svnadmin dump the repository
• on the main SVN server load the dump using svnadmin load

The steps above seem easier to me than installing the pre-revprop-change hook. (The one we currently have in place allows editing log message only.)

Note: instead of changing system date it would be also possible to edit the date in the dump file before loading it.