Sometimes you need to know not only what lines have changed, but also
who exactly changed specific lines in a file. That's when the
→
command, sometimes also referred to as annotate
command comes in handy.
This command lists, for every line in a file, the author and the revision
the line was changed.
If you're not interested in changes from earlier revisions you can
set the revision from which the blame should start. Set this to 1
,
if you want the blame for every revision.
By default the blame file is viewed using TortoiseBlame,
which highlights the different revisions to make it easier to read.
If you wish to print or edit the blame file, select
Use Text viewer to view blames.
You can specify the way that line ending and whitespace changes are handled.
These options are described in Section 4.10.2, “Line-end and Whitespace Options”.
The default behaviour is to treat all whitespace and line-end differences
as real changes, but if you want to ignore an indentation change and find
the original author, you can choose an appropriate option here.
You can include merge information as well if you wish, although this option
can take considerably longer to retrieve from the server. When lines are merged
from another source, the blame information shows the revision the change
was made in the original source as well as the revision when it was merged
into this file.
Once you press OK TortoiseSVN starts retrieving
the data to create the blame file. Please note: This can take several
minutes to finish, depending on how much the file has changed and
of course your network connection to the repository. Once the blame
process has finished the result is written into a temporary file and
you can view the results.
TortoiseBlame, which is included with TortoiseSVN, makes the blame file
easier to read. When you hover the mouse over a line in the blame info
column, all lines with the same revision are shown with a darker
background. Lines from other revisions which were changed by the same author
are shown with a light background.
The colouring may not work as clearly if you have your display set to
256 colour mode.
If you left click
on a line, all lines with the same revision are highlighted, and lines from
other revisions by the same author are highlighted in a lighter colour.
This highlighting is sticky, allowing you to move the mouse without losing
the highlights. Click on that revision again to turn off highlighting.
The revision comments (log message) are shown in a hint box whenever
the mouse hovers over the blame info column. If you want to copy the
log message for that revision, use the context menu which appears when
you right click on the blame info column.
You can search within the Blame report using
→ .
This allows you to search for revision numbers, authors and the content of
the file itself. Log messages are not included in the search - you should
use the Log Dialog to search those.
You can also jump to a specific line number using
→ .
When the mouse is over the blame info columns, a context menu is
available which helps with comparing revisions and examining history,
using the revision number of the line under the mouse as a reference.
→ generates a blame report for the same file, but using
the previous revision as the upper limit. This gives you the blame
report for the state of the file just before the line you are looking
at was last changed.
→ starts your diff viewer, showing you what changed in
the referenced revision.
→ displays the revision log dialog starting with the
referenced revision.
If you need a better visual indicator of where the oldest and newest
changes are, select
→ .
This will use a colour gradient to show newer lines in red and older lines
in blue. The default colouring is quite light, but you can change it using
the TortoiseBlame settings.
If you are using Merge Tracking and you requested merge info when starting the blame,
merged lines are shown slightly differently. Where a line has changed as a result of
merging from another path, TortoiseBlame will show the revision and author
of the last change in the original file rather than the revision where the
merge took place. These lines are indicated by showing the revision and
author in italics.
The revision where the merge took place is shown separately in the tooltip
when you hover the mouse over the blame info columns.
If you do not want merged lines shown in this way, uncheck the
Include merge info checkbox when starting the blame.
If you want to see the paths involved in the merge, select
→ .
This shows the path where the line was last changed, excluding changes resulting
from a merge.
The revision shown in the blame information represents the last revision where the
content of that line changed. If the file was created by copying another file, then
until you change a line, its blame revision will show the last change in the original
source file, not the revision where the copy was made. This also applies to the
paths shown with merge info. The path shows the repository location where the last
change was made to that line.
The settings for TortoiseBlame can be accessed using
→
on the TortoiseBlame tab. Refer to
Section 4.30.9, “TortoiseBlame Settings”.