svn:ignore for a complicated directory structure

Question

i have a directory structure like this:

home/

- application/

- images/

- temporary/

     scripts/

     js/

     cache/

     uploads/

Now i want to keep my temporary directory and all the sub-directories like (scripts, js, cache, upload....) in the svn, but i want to svn:ignore all the content which is inside directories, so that every time i execute svn status -u, data from temporary directory won't list.

I am using linux. and using following commands:

svn propset svn:ignore "*" .

and then commit -m 'text'

i can see temporary directory listed when executing this command:

svn propget svn:ignore

Is there a particular reason why you need this? Normally temporary directories should be created as part of your build process rather than being checked in. — Ian Roberts
Its the requirement, these directories must be in svn repo, but i need to ignore the content inside them. — Syed ADnan

Lazy Badger Lazy Badger · Accepted Answer · 2014-02-16T13:49:06

SVN Book must be your best friend for a long time.

Re-read carefully description of svn:ignore property in "Chapter 3. Advanced Topics" - "Properties" - Subversion's Reserved Properties topic and detect 3 your mistakes

If you still will not be able to do it

svn:ignore

If present on a directory, the value is a list of unversioned file patterns to be ignored by svn status and other subcommands.

means:

if you want to ignore files in <somedir> then svn:ignore must be defined for <somedir>, for every <somedir>, not just once somewhere
files, which you want to see ignored, must not be versioned. Ingone will work only with externals files, not with files already in repo

Thus:

scripts/* + js/* + cache/* + uploads/* files must show status ?, but parent directories - exist already in repo
svn propset svn:ignore "*" . must be executed not in outer space blindly but after cd to every parent dir, 4 times
Executed in unknown dir (/home ???) wrong svn propset svn:ignore "*" . must be found and undo'ed (svn pd ...)

svn:ignore for a complicated directory structure

2 Answers