Summary
Finding the status of your working copy
How do I find the status of my working copy?
In CVS, if you want to see what has changed in your working copy, odds are that you run cvs update. This command shows you the status of the files in your
working copy, but it also updates your CVS working copy to the latest
revision of the repository.* This not only requires a round-trip to
the server, but also may change files in your working copy. Finding
out what you've changed locally is different from finding out what
has changed in the repository, but CVS mixes the two.**
With Subversion, if you want to find out what you've modified, you run svn
status. This command compares the files in your working copy with
those in the Subversion administrative areas (those pesky .svn
directories), thus avoiding the necessity of a network round-trip:
$ svn status
D fish.c
A shrimp.c
M anemone.c
Note that fish.c is scheduled for deletion, shrimp.c is
scheduled for addition, and anemone.c has been modified.
Now, by default, svn status shows only the files that are interesting
(like those that have been added, modified, or deleted). If you want
to see information about all the files in your working copy, pass the
--verbose switch:
$ svn status --verbose
44 23 sally README
44 30 sally INSTALL
44 35 harry trout.c
D 44 19 ira fish.c
A 0 ? ? shrimp.c
M 0 ? ? anemone.c
44 36 harry things/rocks.txt
The first column remains the same, but the
second shows the working revision of the item. The third and fourth
columns show the revision in which the item last changed, and who
changed it.
If you want to know which files will be updated
the next time you run svn update, use the --show-updates switch to
svn status:
$ svn status --show-updates --verbose
* 44 23 sally README
44 30 sally INSTALL
* 44 35 harry trout.c
D 44 19 ira fish.c
A 0 ? ? shrimp.c
M * 44 32 sally anemone.c
44 36 harry things/rocks.txt
You can see that the files that will be updated are marked with a *.
* Unless you pass
CVS the -n switch.
** CVS has a status command, but it is not very useful.
