SVN, properties, ignoring files and my cheat sheet.

by Vid Luther on May 9, 2007

in Uncategorized

This is my own cheat sheet for svn propset, which I struggle with every few months. Hopefully, I can remember this next time..

Problem : I want to ignore certain files in my working copy, when I do an svn status, svn commit etc. I don’t want the cache, or my .pyc files to get committed.

Solution : svn pe svn:ignore .
this should open vim, and then on each line I enter the files I want to ignore..

*.pyc
*.swp
*.tmp
cache/*

Caveats: I need to do this for each directory, I can’t find a recursive option for this.. so when I’m doing python, and each application has it’s own dir, I need to do it for each sub dir.

PS: Yes, I’m using python these days.. have to do it for a client.

  • Without auto-props or global-ignores, there's no way to recursively define svn:ignore (the performance hit would be too great: SVN would have to backtrack every versioned parent directory to figure out what files to ignore). If you have, however, a bunch of directories that need the proper ignore props, you can always use svn propset with the -R flag, which makes it recursive.
  • John and Mike,
    The reason why I didn't mention the svn config file, is because I wanted a way to make it work for anyone who did an svn co on my project.

    This way, whether you have windows, or a unix bases system.. or if you don't know where to edit the file, you don't accidentally add things.
  • The “recursive” solution you are seeking is the global-ignores option in your .subversion/config file.

    My .subversion/config file has:
    global-ignores = CVS .DS_Store Thumbs.db WS_FTP.LOG _notes _vti_* *.LCK

    Subversion is an awesome version control system. If you haven’t already, get a copy of the Subversion book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
  • You can actually do this by using your svn config file. This will essentially have these rules global. :)
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