Ignoring Unversioned Items

In any given working copy, there is a good chance that alongside all those versioned files and directories are other files and directories that are neither versioned nor intended to be. Text editors litter directories with backup files. Software compilers generate intermediate—or even final—files that you typically wouldn't bother to version. And users themselves drop various other files and directories wherever they see fit, often in version control working copies.

It's ludicrous to expect Subversion working copies to be somehow impervious to this kind of clutter and impurity. In fact, Subversion counts it as a feature that its working copies are just typical directories, just like unversioned trees. But these not-to-be-versioned files and directories can cause some annoyance for Subversion users. For example, because the svn add and svn import commands act recursively by default and don't know which files in a given tree you do and don't wish to version, it's easy to accidentally add stuff to version control that you didn't mean to. And because svn status reports, by default, every item of interest in a working copy—including unversioned files and directories—its output can get quite noisy where many of these things exist.

So Subversion provides several ways for telling it which files you would prefer that it simply disregard. One of the ways involves the use of Subversion's runtime configuration system (see the section called “Runtime Configuration Area”), and therefore applies to all the Subversion operations that make use of that runtime configuration—generally those performed on a particular computer or by a particular user of a computer. Two other methods make use of Subversion's directory property support and are more tightly bound to the versioned tree itself, and therefore affects everyone who has a working copy of that tree. All of these mechanisms use file patterns (strings of literal and special wildcard characters used to match against filenames) to decide which files to ignore.

The Subversion runtime configuration system provides an option, global-ignores, whose value is a whitespace-delimited collection of file patterns. The Subversion client checks these patterns against the names of the files that are candidates for addition to version control, as well as to unversioned files that the svn status command notices. If any file's name matches one of the patterns, Subversion will basically act as if the file didn't exist at all. This is really useful for the kinds of files that you almost never want to version, such as editor backup files such as Emacs' *~ and .*~ files.

When found on a versioned directory, the svn:ignore property is expected to contain a list of newline-delimited file patterns that Subversion should use to determine ignorable objects in that same directory. These patterns do not override those found in the global-ignores runtime configuration option, but are instead appended to that list. And it's worth noting again that, unlike the global-ignores option, the patterns found in the svn:ignore property apply only to the directory on which that property is set, and not to any of its subdirectories. The svn:ignore property is a good way to tell Subversion to ignore files that are likely to be present in every user's working copy of that directory, such as compiler output or—to use an example more appropriate to this book—the HTML, PDF, or PostScript files generated as the result of a conversion of some source DocBook XML files to a more legible output format.

Subversion 1.8 provides a more powerful version of the svn:ignore property, the svn:global-ignores property. Like the svn:ignore property, svn:global-ignores can only be set on a directory and contains file patterns Subversion uses to determine ignorable objects.[21] These ignore patterns are also appended to any patterns defined in the global-ignores runtime configuration option together with any svn:ignore defined patterns. Unlike svn:ignore however, the svn:global-ignores property is inheritable [22] and applies to all paths under the directory on which the property is set, not just the immediate children of the directory.

Note

Subversion's support for ignorable file patterns extends only to the one-time process of adding unversioned files and directories to version control. Once an object is under Subversion's control, the ignore pattern mechanisms no longer apply to it. In other words, don't expect Subversion to avoid committing changes you've made to a versioned file simply because that file's name matches an ignore pattern—Subversion always notices all of its versioned objects.

The ignore patterns in the global-ignores runtime configuration option tend to be more a matter of personal taste[23] and ties more closely to a user's particular tool chain than to the details of any particular working copy's needs. So, the rest of this section will focus on the svn:ignore and svn:global-ignores properies and their uses.

Say you have the following output from svn status:

$ svn status calc
 M      calc/button.c
?       calc/calculator
?       calc/data.c
?       calc/debug_log
?       calc/debug_log.1
?       calc/debug_log.2.gz
?       calc/debug_log.3.gz

In this example, you have made some property modifications to button.c, but in your working copy, you also have some unversioned files: the latest calculator program that you've compiled from your source code, a source file named data.c, and a set of debugging output logfiles. Now, you know that your build system always results in the calculator program being generated.[24] And you know that your test suite always leaves those debugging logfiles lying around. These facts are true for all working copies of this project, not just your own. And you know that you aren't interested in seeing those things every time you run svn status, and you are pretty sure that nobody else is interested in them either. So you use svn propedit svn:ignore calc to add some ignore patterns to the calc directory.

$ svn propget svn:ignore calc
calculator
debug_log*
$

After you've added this property, you will now have a local property modification on the calc directory. But notice what else is different about your svn status output:

$ svn status
 M      calc
 M      calc/button.c
?       calc/data.c

Now, all that cruft is missing from the output! Your calculator compiled program and all those logfiles are still in your working copy; Subversion just isn't constantly reminding you that they are present and unversioned. And now with all the uninteresting noise removed from the display, you are left with more intriguing items—such as that source code file data.c that you probably forgot to add to version control.

Of course, this less-verbose report of your working copy status isn't the only one available. If you actually want to see the ignored files as part of the status report, you can pass the --no-ignore option to Subversion:

$ svn status --no-ignore
 M      calc
 M      calc/button.c
I       calc/calculator
?       calc/data.c
I       calc/debug_log
I       calc/debug_log.1
I       calc/debug_log.2.gz
I       calc/debug_log.3.gz
I       calc/wip.1.diff

All of your previously hidden unversioned paths are once again shown, but now with the 'I' Ignored status. But wait, what about wip.1.diff? The svn:ignore property on calc doesn't include any pattern that matches that filename, so why is it ignored?[25] The answer lies in the third method by which Subversion can disregard unversioned paths, the inheritable svn:global-ignores property. Using the svn propget subcommand with the --show-inherited-props option, you see that the svn:global-ignores property is set on the root of your working copy, and sure enough, it defines a matching ignore pattern:

$ svn pg svn:global-ignores calc -v --show-inherited-props
Inherited properties on 'calc',
from '.':
  svn:global-ignores
    *.diff
    *.patch

As mentioned earlier, the list of file patterns to ignore is also used by svn add and svn import. Both of these operations involve asking Subversion to begin managing some set of files and directories. Rather than force the user to pick and choose which files in a tree she wishes to start versioning, Subversion uses the ignore patterns—the global, per-directory, and inherited lists—to determine which files should not be swept into the version control system as part of a larger recursive addition or import operation. And here again, you can use the --no-ignore option to tell Subversion to disregard its ignores list and operate on all the files and directories present.

Tip

Even if svn:ignore or svn:global-ignores is set, you may run into problems if you use shell wildcards in a command. Shell wildcards are expanded into an explicit list of targets before Subversion operates on them, so running svn SUBCOMMAND * is just like running svn SUBCOMMAND file1 file2 file3 …. In the case of the svn add command, this has an effect similar to passing the --no-ignore option. So instead of using a wildcard, use svn add --force . to do a bulk scheduling of unversioned things for addition. The explicit target will ensure that the current directory isn't overlooked because of being already under version control, and the --force option will cause Subversion to crawl through that directory, adding unversioned files while still honoring the svn:ignore and svn:global-ignores properties and the global-ignores runtime configuration variable. Be sure to also provide the --depth files option to the svn add command if you don't want a fully recursive crawl for things to add.



[21] The ignore patterns in the svn:global-ignores property may be delimited with any whitespace (similar to the global-ignores runtime configuration option), not just newlines (as with the svn:ignore property).

[22] Of course only a 1.8 or newer Subversion client will recognize the inheritability and special meaning of the svn:global-ignores property!

[23] Despite being a matter of personal taste, if you don't explicitly set the global-ignores runtime configuration option—either to your preferred set of patterns or to an empty string—Subversion uses a default value. See the global-ignores entry in the section called “General configuration”

[24] Isn't that the whole point of a build system?

[25] Let's assume that you don't have a matching pattern anywhere in your global-ignores runtime configuration.