Is there a concept of global ignores in svn?

Michael Stum picture Michael Stum · Apr 23, 2010 · Viewed 49.9k times · Source

Is there a way to setup a global list of Ignores for a SVN Repository or for the SVN Client on the PC?

The only reason I'm using tools like Tortoise/Ankh/VisualSVN is because I want to only check in the files I need without all the bin/obj/Resharper stuff.

I'm spoiled by .gitignore and .hgignore which I just copy to a repository and then use git commit -a without having to care about checking in junk.

I know I can manually set it, but that's tedious to do and I think it had to be applied to every new folder that gets created as well.

Using SVN under Windows.

Answer

Greg Hewgill picture Greg Hewgill · Apr 23, 2010

On an install of Subversion, there is a file in a path such as one of the following:

  • Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10: C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\config
  • Windows XP: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\.subversion\config
  • Unix (Linux, etc), macOS: $HOME/.subversion/config

that contains a global configuration for Subversion. In the [miscellany] section is a global-ignores parameter which you can use to set up globally ignored filename patterns.

The Runtime Configuration Area section of the Subversion book has more information, including how to set up such global configuration parameters in the registry if you need to.

Typical examples:

[miscellany]
global-ignores = *.o *.so *.so.[0-9]* .DS_Store [Tt]humbs.db

or perhaps if you are in a transition phase to using Git:

[miscellany]
global-ignores = .git