What is the best (or as good as possible) general SVN ignore pattern to use?
There are a number of different IDE, editor, compiler, plug-in, platform, etc. specific files and some file types that "overlap" (i.e. desirable for some types projects and not for others).
There are however, a large number of file types that you just never want included in source control automatically regardless the specifics of your development environment.
The answer to this question would serve as a good starting point for any project - only requiring them to add the few environment specific items they need. It could be adapted for other Version Control Systems (VCS) as well.
I'll add my own two cents to this question:
I use the following SVN ignore pattern with TortoiseSVN and Subversion CLI for native C++, C#/VB.NET, and PERL projects on both Windows and Linux platforms. It works well for me!
Formatted for copy and paste:
*.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store thumbs.db Thumbs.db *.bak *.class *.exe *.dll *.mine *.obj *.ncb *.lib *.log *.idb *.pdb *.ilk *.msi* .res *.pch *.suo *.exp *.*~ *.~* ~*.* cvs CVS .CVS .cvs release Release debug Debug ignore Ignore bin Bin obj Obj *.csproj.user *.user *.generated.cs
Formatted for readability:
*.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store thumbs.db Thumbs.db *.bak *.class *.exe *.dll *.mine *.obj *.ncb *.lib *.log *.idb *.pdb *.ilk *.msi* .res *.pch *.suo *.exp *.*~ *.~* ~*.* cvs CVS .CVS .cvs release Release debug Debug ignore Ignore bin Bin obj Obj *.csproj.user *.user *.generated.cs