Using svn:ignore to ignore everything but certain

Question

With the svn:ignore property, is there a way I can specify what I want to ignore based on patterns which I don't want to ignore? In other words, I want to ignore everything but files ending in .xyz. How would I go about doing that (if it's even possible)?

One option I've explored is committing everything I want to be versioned, then setting the svn:ignore property on the directory to be '*', thus meaning no other files but what I've already committed will be versioned. This is the best I can come up with, but it feels dirty in that if I ever did need to add another file to be version, I'd have to make multiple commits... one to remove the svn:ignore property, another to add/commit the new file(s), and then a third to change svn:ignore back to '*'.

Your thoughts?

Answer 1

Well, I don't know if I miss something, but you can use any pattern you want:

svn propset svn:ignore "*~" .

You can check with:

svn propget svn:ignore .

Another way is to use an alias / script that can do complex parsing when committing.

The best solution I find to use myself is to completely separate the versioned tree of source files from the build tree. This way you do not generate things in your versioned tree of a directory. Then you can only use svn:ignore to ignore simple artefacts generated by text editors for example.

EDIT:

Sorry my mistake for the first solution, I have misread your post. The two other ways seems relevant even if not exactly what you want...

Answer 2

Have a look at http://www.thoughtspark.org/node/38. Obviously you can use "!" in character groups to negate its meaning. So if you want to ignore everything except files ending with .java, set the following pattern to svn:ignore:

*[!j][!a][!v][!a]
*.java?*

Answer 3

This is what I have set on bin folder for svn:ignore property to match everything except apk files:

*[!a][!p][!k]
*a[!p][!k]
*ap[!k]

If there would be full RegExp support you could use negative lookbehind, but that's rarely implemented anyway (e.g not in JavaScript) and is inefficient.

Answer 4

The following works for me and gets rid of a few quirks of the other suggestions.

*.?
*.??
*.???
*.[!j]???
*.?[!a]??
*.??[!v]?
*.???[!a]
*.?????*

A line by line explanation follows:

• ignore everything that has a one-letter extension
• ignore everything that has a two-letter extension
• ignore everything that has a three-letter extension
• ignore everything that has a four-letter extension where the extension's first letter is not j
• ignore everything that has a four-letter extension where the extension's second letter is not a
• ignore everything that has a four-letter extension where the extension's third letter is not v
• ignore everything that has a four-letter extension where the extension's fourth letter is not a
• ignore everything that has a five-letter extension or more

Limitations:

• This will also block directories that end on .java
• Unfortunately I was not able to ignore files without extension, since that would also block directories.

Answer 5

That's the only solution I know of. You can explicitly add files even if they are ignored though.

You would need to add that setting on all subdirectories though.

# Create a repository with property ignore *

[wlynch@orange ~] cd /tmp
[wlynch@orange /tmp] svnadmin create foo
[wlynch@orange /tmp] svn co file:///tmp/foo co
Checked out revision 0.
[wlynch@orange /tmp] cd co
[wlynch@orange co] svn propset svn:ignore \* .
property 'svn:ignore' set on '.'

# Create 3 files

[wlynch@orange co] touch a
[wlynch@orange co] touch b
[wlynch@orange co] touch c

# We can add all 3 of these files in one transaction

[wlynch@orange co] svn status
M     .
[wlynch@orange co] svn add a
A         a
[wlynch@orange co] svn add b
A         b
[wlynch@orange co] svn status
M     .
A      a
A      b
[wlynch@orange co] svn add c
A         c
[wlynch@orange co] svn ci
Sending        .
Adding         a
Adding         b
Adding         c
Transmitting file data ...
Committed revision 1.

Answer 6

No, there is no exclusive matching like you described. This article lists the possibilities for pattern matching. It's limited to:

• ? - Matches any single character
• * - Matches any string of characters, including the empty string
• [ - Begins a character class definition terminated by ], used for matching a subset of characters

A similar question was asked already here.