svn ignore setting how-to?

Question

You can't ignore files that already exist in the repository.

Ignoring is mainly used when you create files that you don't want to accidentally put into your repository. For example, in C, you create *.o files from *.c, or in Java, you create *.class files from *.java. If I set my work directory up to ignore these file, the version control system won't report on them.

Imagine this setup:

$ svn st
M  foo.txt
M  bar.txt
?  ignore.me

The file ignore.me is reported. Now, I'm going to ignore it:

$ svn ps svn:ignore 'ignore.me' .
$ svn st
 M .
M  foo.txt
M  bar.txt

Notice that ignore.me is no longer showing up when I take a status. However, I can add it:

$ svn add ignore.me
 M .
M  foo.txt
M  bar.txt
A  ignore.me

Notice it is showing up in my status report. That's because it's now part of the repository (or will be once I do a commit). We use Java and all of our build stuff goes under a directory called target. We also have a build.properties file that can be setup by the developers to change the way the build works. However, this is a file that's used on a per-developer basis, and should not be checked into our repository.

Therefore, I add both build.properties and target to my svn:ignore. Sometimes I will remove the .project and .classpath from a project and then ignore those too. These are Eclipse files that should be setup on a per developer basis.

If you need to prevent people from checking in changes to particular files, or even to add particular files (that is not only ignore, but prevent anyone from purposefully adding the files), you need a pre-commit hook. This will help enforce your setup and prevent users from making changes they shouldn't make.