views:

28

answers:

2

I often have lots of whitespace-only changes (spaces turning to tabs or vice versa etc.) and I generally don't care about these changes. I know that whitespace could be important (i.e. some whitespace changes can be breaking), but it would be very useful if there was a way to tell when looking at huge lists of files which ones contain whitespace changes only.

Please I am not looking for the "you should never have that many files to check in" kind of response, I'm aware of that already - this is just the situation and I'd like some advice!

Thanks.

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A: 

I don't think you can. You should probably relegate them to different commits. I.E. have one commit that contains all the whitespace/formatting changes with a comment to that effect then another that contains the actual code/logic changes.

Dave
The only problem with that is that the whitespace changes sneak up on us, so if we did them very consciously and separately this would work, but alas this is not the case!
joshcomley
Before checking in, we always review each changed file, by viewing the diffs. Then, if we find one that's whitespace-only, we either revert it, or commit it separately from the others.
Roger Lipscombe
@Roger, I agree. It's a pain admittedly, but without SVN having knowledge of every language it'd be hard for it to tell what is and isn't a significant change.
Dave
@Roger + @Dave - this is exactly what we're currently doing, but there's often a whole lotta files!
joshcomley
A: 

Concluded it can't be done :(

joshcomley