Force subversion not to merge specific files

Question

We are having problems in a project that uses Entity Framework and subversion.

Every time someone tries to merge a edmx-file the file is corrupt. We have put a svn:needs-lock property, however this means that no one can edit the file locally. See this post.

We need to be able to edit the file locally during development and then apply changes to the file when they are ready. We realise that this means that we will loose some local changes to the file.

Maybe there is someone else who has ran into this problem with entity framework and subversion?

BR Larre

Answer 1

Subversion will only try to merge a file if it thinks it is a text file. If you manually set a mime-type that indicates binary semantics, no merging will be done, this can be done by manually setting a mime-type that indicates that the file is binary and not text.

See the section titled svn:mime-type on this page for more information.

If you set the mime-type to application/octet-stream, it will always flag the file as being in a conflicted state.

svn propset svn:mime-type application/octet-stream FILENAME.EDMX

I'm venturing a guess that it's going to be impossible for Subversion to plainly ignore local modifications to the file, unless you just ask Subversion not to track the file at all.

Answer 2

As explained in the same post, just use svn lock to modify a locked file, and commit it as usual.

For example:

svn lock favicon.gif

Do I miss something?