modify subversion commit message for particular commit

read: http://subversion.tigris.org/faq.html#change-log-msg

there are a few ways to do this. the following requires you have shell access to the server with the repo on it.

svnadmin setlog /Volumes/DATA/SubVersion/projectname/ -r 2297 ./tmppropmessage.txt --bypass-hooks

you have to do this on the local machine with the subversion repo available via a normal filesystem path. you have to pass the message in as text file. strange that you cant pass a -m "message" param.

$ cat tmppropmessage.txt
refactored the blah blah blah commit message goes here.

NOTE the --bypass-hooks option should be used with care. there are sometimes things in the pre-revprop-change hook script that are important (like emailing an administrator letting them know that you changed a property)

if you don't pass the --bypass-hooks option you may have to deal with whatever logic is in the /path/to/repo/projectname/hooks/pre-revprop-change.tmpl

here is an example of that hook (note i trimmed out all the comments):

$ cat ./hooks/pre-revprop-change.tmpl

REPOS="$1"
REV="$2"
USER="$3"
PROPNAME="$4"
ACTION="$5"

if [ "$ACTION" = "M" -a "$PROPNAME" = "svn:log" ]; then exit 0; fi

echo "Changing revision properties other than svn:log is prohibited" >&2
exit 1

as you can see the above logic makes sure the user is not trying to change properties OTHER than the log. so changing our log message would have worked without the --bypass-hooks switch in this instance.