Subversion: ignore modifications to a file locally on one client only

Question

Is it possible to ignore changes to a file in subversion locally on one client only, without propagating the ignore to the whole repository.

The particular problem I'm dealing with is that I've checked out a project and modified a bunch of files including the Makefile, which is already part of the repository. Now the environment I'm working on is different from the rest of the group, and I want the changes to the Makefiles to remain local on my machine and not be committed.

However, I don't want to set svn:ignore because that I believe would commit the ignore to the repository, while it is important to keep the make file there.

Cheers,

/fuad

Answer 1

Use svn export to export the file so it's not under version control.

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.0/re10.html

edit: However I believe this has to be done on a per-directory basis, so you'd have to reorganise your files somewhat.

I can't test this at the moment, but would a sparse checkout help you here?

http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.sparsedirs.html

Answer 2

The closest safe solution I can think of is to use a personal branch.

Answer 3

if you use Subversion 1.5.x or higher you can use changelists:

svn cl COMMIT /path/to/project/*

svn cl NOT_COMMIT /path/to/project/Makefile

Note: with second command Makefile will be removed from first changelist. You can ignore the warning.

Do not commit the second changelist.

do commits via:

svn ci --cl COMMIT -m"<LOG MESSAGE HERE>"

Important: If you commit without --cl option, ALL your changes will be committed

Answer 4

As with many aspects of svn, tortoise makes it really easy. In fact, I believe tortoise actually adds features by using existing svn features in a systematic way. I realize this answer is windows only, then, but perhaps some people out there are like me and still use windows. In the "Check for Modifications" popup simply right click your files and select "Move to Changelist"->"ignore-on-commit". Now when you checkin using tortoise, it'll segment your changes into the various change lists, so at least you can visually tell what you want to commit and what you don't want to commit.