how to make svn diff to ignore binary files

Question

My svn version is 1.8.8, OS is Ubuntu 14.04.

I'm transferring a project from ant to maven, so I delete the jar files in lib directory. When I created a svn diff file for code review, I find the diff file contains lots of binary compare result in it, the content of deleted jar files.

I added "*.jar = svn:mime-application/octet-stream" to ~/.subversion/config, but it didn't work.

How can I make svn diff ignore binary files?

Answer 1

This SO link says you can not make svn diff ignore some files, but you can do following:

First, make diff file:

svn diff > svn_diff_file

Second, use filterdiff to filter file created above:

filterdiff svn_diff_file -x *.jar

Answer 2

Or even easier without any intermediary file:

svn diff | filterdiff -x *.jar | colordiff

colordiff was only used to see in colors what was added or removed.