Excluding a single project file from an SVN repository

Question

I have a django project that I have been working on as a solo developer, and have been using TortoiseSVN to keep the code managed in a repository on a work server. I work on this on a local installation of django etc.

There is now a second person who will be working on this project, and the possibility of working on some other PCs.

Now, there should, for the time being, only be one development version (branch?) of this project, but the configuration file (settings.py) will need to be different on each computer that is being used. I want to create one local version of this file on each PC which should not need to be changed again.

How can I set the repository (preferably within TortoiseSVN) to exclude this one file? E.g. the repository should not include settings.py. When a checkout occurs, it should update all files in the local folder but not change/remove the local copy of settings.py. When a commit occurs, settings.py should be ignored and not uploaded.

At the moment settings.py is overwritten/updated as per any other file in the project folder/repository.

Any nudges in the right direction would be useful - I'm new to SVN generally and would like to know if this is something that's going to need detailed understanding of branching or if there is a simpler way.

Thanks

Answer 1

In TortoiseSVN, when you try to commit your files, in the file list dialog, right click the file and look for the Ignore option. You can ignore by complete filename or extension.

If the file is already in the repository, and you want to remove it from there and ignore it, you can simply right-click the file and in the TortoiseSVN menu look for the 'Delete and add to ignore list' option.

Answer 2

You'll be looking for the svn:ignore property, which tells subversion to not version files matching a pattern or patterns you specify.

There's some guidance on using it with TortoiseSVN at:

http://arcware.net/tortoisesvn-global-ignore-pattern-vs-svn-ignore/

Answer 3

These should help:

I have a file in my project that every developer must change, but I don't want those local mods to ever be committed. How can I make 'svn commit' ignore the file?

Excluding Items from the Commit List

Answer 4

The typical solution is to do what bgever said and ignore the settings file itself, and then commit a file with example values, something like settings.py.example. That file should only be updated when you add or remove settings. When deploying, you'd copy that to settings.py and edit the values.