How SVN revert affects other collaborators in the project?

Question

There are multiple collaborators to a project stored in SVN. The current repository revision is 10. I've just found out that I need to revert to revision 5 and start working from there. Then I make changes and make a new commit (revision 11).

How does this affect other collaborators? When they try to commit (creating version 12) what will happen? I guess they will be notified of code/file conflicts. And what are they then supposed to do?

Answer 1

Assuming that you revert those changes properly (via a reverse merge), it doesn't affect them any differently than any other merge of changes between branches, or even committing a "normal" forward-moving set of changes.

Answer 2

You can revert all of the changes between revisions 6 through 10 (and making a new revision 12 which will match what was in revision 5), by using the svn merge command:

$ svn merge -r11:6 .

However, this will remove the changes your coworkers might need. Instead, you might want to create a branch, then put your changes onto that:

$ svn cp -r5 $REPO/trunk@5 $REPO/branches/revert_to_5

Once you create your branch, you can switch your working copy to that branch:

$ svn switch $REPO/branches/revert_to_5

Then, commit your changes which will be on that branch

$ svn commit -m"My commits on revision 5"

Once you do that, you'll have to figure out what to do to get you and your coworkers working back together. Maybe they too want to work off the branch, or maybe you might decide to put your changes back on trunk:

$ svn co $REPO/trunk
$ cd trunk
$ svn merge $REPO/branches/revert_to_5

Then, delete the branch since you no longer need it

$ svn delete -m"No longer needed" $REPO/branches/revert_to_5