M@Blog

SVN users who wish to ignore multiple files with distinct names in the same folder beware : you must use a file and batch-process.

It’s not difficult to figure out that to tell SVN to ignore a file, you use:

svn propset svn:ignore [filename] [folder]

So if I have a file ‘config.php’ in folder config, in the config folder I would simply type

svn propset svn:ignore config.php .

But what if I also have another file, say ‘database.php’, in the same folder that I want to ignore?  On top of that, what if I have other files with a .php extension that I don’t want to ignore?  The following will not work:

svn propset svn:ignore “config.php database.php” .

(incorrect syntax)

svn propset svn:ignore “*.php” .

(but i don’t want to ignore some .php files)

nor would the following, because svn for some odd reason seems to only take one propset assignment from the commandline - meaning only one of the files will be ignored:

svn propset svn:ignore config.php .
svn propset svn:ignore database.php .

turns out you must make a file with the filenames on separate lines, then call with the -F parameter.  For example in the above case, I would create a file “ignore.me” with config.php and database.php on separate lines, then call

svn propset svn:ignore -F ignore.me .

Annoying.  SVN should let you set the same property on multiple files with multiple command-line calls.

Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 4:04 pm.
Filed under geekery.
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