Bug#343142: subversion: svn diff won't work with a date

[Jason Dorje Short]

Package: subversion
Version: 1.2.3dfsg1-3
Severity: normal


In cvs one could do 'cvs diff -D "December"' to get a diff.

In svn, "svn help diff" says:

  -r [--revision] arg      : ARG (some commands also take ARG1:ARG2 range)
                             A revision argument can be one of:
                                NUMBER       revision number
                                "{" DATE "}" revision at start of the date

However all of the following give an error:

  svn diff -r {December}
  svn diff -r "{December}"
  svn diff -r "\{December\}"
  svn diff -r \{December\}
  svn diff -r December
  svn diff -r {{December}}
  svn diff -r "{{December}}"
  svn diff -r "{" December "}"

nor does it work when I give an exact date, like "December 1, 2005", or a
"/bin/date" date, like "1 day ago".

This is a major problem for me.  It seems like either this option is
completely broken or the help is just wrong.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.14-2-686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages subversion depends on:
ii  db4.3-util                 4.3.29-1      Berkeley v4.3 Database Utilities
ii  libapr0                    2.0.55-3      the Apache Portable Runtime
ii  libc6                      2.3.5-8.1     GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libneon24                  0.24.7.dfsg-3 An HTTP and WebDAV client library
ii  libsvn0                    1.2.3dfsg1-3  shared libraries used by Subversio
ii  patch                      2.5.9-2       Apply a diff file to an original

subversion recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information