I deleted Tortoise SVN before checking in all files: Reinstalled Tortoise, now what do I do?

Question

Had to format my windows box and obviously this removed Tortoise SVN before I had a chance to check in all changes from my working copy. The working copy is still present, and now that I've reinstalled Tortoise SVN what is the best plan of action?

Basically is there an easier way of carrying on than creating a new working copy and manually checking out those files I've changed and copying them across from the old working copy?

Answer 1

With SVN, the link between the working copy and the repository is stored in a hidden directory called .svn either in the root of the working copy, or in every directory of the working copy.

So, all you need to do, is commit. Think of it like notepad and a text file, you can uninstall and re-install notepad as often as you like, as long as notepad is installed you can edit that text file, it will not disappear (until you delete it too).

Answer 2

First, create a backup. Then, at each step, create a backup and store them readonly in a place where they will be safe.

Then, the action plan I suggest is fairly simple:

1: Do what it takes to have a working copy connected to the base (most probably this would be as below)

• Install Tortoise
• Checkout the entire project in another location
• You may want to checkout the revision you were working on when the problem occurred (instead of HEAD): this will ease later merges

2: Now that you have a 'working' working copy, overwrite it with the data you recovered from the crash (this would look like an edit from SVN point of view)

3: Update your working copy to HEAD, as you would normally do. Hope you won't have too many conflicts. then commit and resume working