How to ignore SVN folders in WinMerge

diff()svnwinmerge

I'm trying to recursively compare two Subversion working copy folders using WinMerge.

Unfortunately, WinMerge displays lots of differencing files inside of the subversion control folders (.svn or _svn).

Is it possible to somehow exclude the subversion folders from the comparison? Or is there another (free) diff-tool which is able to do this?

Best Answer

Try making a Filefilter

WinMerge handles this just fine. You want to create and use a Filter. Under Tools | Filters... | Filefilters, create a new filter or modify an existing one.

It will look like this:

## Ignore Java class and jar files
f: \.class$
f: \.jar$

## Ignore subversion housekeeping directories
d: \\.svn$
d: \\._svn$

Save it, then when selecting items to merge, select the filter you defined from the Select Files or Folders dialog box. Bonus points: It will save this and use it as a default for future merges.

Related Solutions

Git – How to migrate an SVN repository with history to a new Git repository

Create a users file (i.e. users.txt) for mapping SVN users to Git:

user1 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
user2 = First Last Name <email@address.com>
...

You can use this one-liner to build a template from your existing SVN repository:

svn log -q | awk -F '|' '/^r/ {gsub(/ /, "", $2); sub(" $", "", $2); print $2" = "$2" <"$2">"}' | sort -u > users.txt

SVN will stop if it finds a missing SVN user, not in the file. But after that, you can update the file and pick up where you left off.

Now pull the SVN data from the repository:

git svn clone --stdlayout --no-metadata --authors-file=users.txt svn://hostname/path dest_dir-tmp

This command will create a new Git repository in dest_dir-tmp and start pulling the SVN repository. Note that the "--stdlayout" flag implies you have the common "trunk/, branches/, tags/" SVN layout. If your layout differs, become familiar with --tags, --branches, --trunk options (in general git svn help).

All common protocols are allowed: svn://, http://, https://. The URL should target the base repository, something like http://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/repository. The URL string must not include /trunk, /tag or /branches.

Note that after executing this command it very often looks like the operation is "hanging/frozen", and it's quite normal that it can be stuck for a long time after initializing the new repository. Eventually, you will then see log messages which indicate that it's migrating.

Also note that if you omit the --no-metadata flag, Git will append information about the corresponding SVN revision to the commit message (i.e. git-svn-id: svn://svn.mycompany.com/myrepo/<branchname/trunk>@<RevisionNumber> <Repository UUID>)

If a user name is not found, update your users.txt file then:

cd dest_dir-tmp
git svn fetch

You might have to repeat that last command several times, if you have a large project until all of the Subversion commits have been fetched:

git svn fetch

When completed, Git will checkout the SVN trunk into a new branch. Any other branches are set up as remotes. You can view the other SVN branches with:

git branch -r

If you want to keep other remote branches in your repository, you want to create a local branch for each one manually. (Skip trunk/master.) If you don't do this, the branches won't get cloned in the final step.

git checkout -b local_branch remote_branch
# It's OK if local_branch and remote_branch are the same names

Tags are imported as branches. You have to create a local branch, make a tag and delete the branch to have them as tags in Git. To do it with tag "v1":

git checkout -b tag_v1 remotes/tags/v1
git checkout master
git tag v1 tag_v1
git branch -D tag_v1

Clone your GIT-SVN repository into a clean Git repository:

git clone dest_dir-tmp dest_dir
rm -rf dest_dir-tmp
cd dest_dir

The local branches that you created earlier from remote branches will only have been copied as remote branches into the newly cloned repository. (Skip trunk/master.) For each branch you want to keep:

git checkout -b local_branch origin/remote_branch

Finally, remove the remote from your clean Git repository that points to the now-deleted temporary repository:

git remote rm origin

How to ignore files in Subversion

(This answer has been updated to match SVN 1.8 and 1.9's behaviour)

You have 2 questions:

Marking files as ignored:

By "ignored file" I mean the file won't appear in lists even as "unversioned": your SVN client will pretend the file doesn't exist at all in the filesystem.

Ignored files are specified by a "file pattern". The syntax and format of file patterns is explained in SVN's online documentation: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/nightly/en/svn.advanced.props.special.ignore.html "File Patterns in Subversion".

Subversion, as of version 1.8 (June 2013) and later, supports 3 different ways of specifying file patterns. Here's a summary with examples:

1 - Runtime Configuration Area - `global-ignores` option:

This is a client-side only setting, so your global-ignores list won't be shared by other users, and it applies to all repos you checkout onto your computer.
This setting is defined in your Runtime Configuration Area file:
- Windows (file-based) - C:\Users\{you}\AppData\Roaming\Subversion\config
- Windows (registry-based) - Software\Tigris.org\Subversion\Config\Miscellany\global-ignores in both HKLM and HKCU.
- Linux/Unix - ~/.subversion/config

2 - The `svn:ignore` property, which is set on directories (not files):

This is stored within the repo, so other users will have the same ignore files. Similar to how .gitignore works.
svn:ignore is applied to directories and is non-recursive or inherited. Any file or immediate subdirectory of the parent directory that matches the File Pattern will be excluded.

While SVN 1.8 adds the concept of "inherited properties", the svn:ignore property itself is ignored in non-immediate descendant directories:

cd ~/myRepoRoot                             # Open an existing repo.
echo "foo" > "ignoreThis.txt"                # Create a file called "ignoreThis.txt".

svn status                                  # Check to see if the file is ignored or not.
> ?    ./ignoreThis.txt
> 1 unversioned file                        # ...it is NOT currently ignored.

svn propset svn:ignore "ignoreThis.txt" .   # Apply the svn:ignore property to the "myRepoRoot" directory.
svn status
> 0 unversioned files                       # ...but now the file is ignored!

cd subdirectory                             # now open a subdirectory.
echo "foo" > "ignoreThis.txt"                # create another file named "ignoreThis.txt".

svn status
> ?    ./subdirectory/ignoreThis.txt        # ...and is is NOT ignored!
> 1 unversioned file

(So the file ./subdirectory/ignoreThis is not ignored, even though "ignoreThis.txt" is applied on the . repo root).

Therefore, to apply an ignore list recursively you must use svn propset svn:ignore <filePattern> . --recursive.
- This will create a copy of the property on every subdirectory.
- If the <filePattern> value is different in a child directory then the child's value completely overrides the parents, so there is no "additive" effect.
- So if you change the <filePattern> on the root ., then you must change it with --recursive to overwrite it on the child and descendant directories.
I note that the command-line syntax is counter-intuitive.
- I started-off assuming that you would ignore a file in SVN by typing something like svn ignore pathToFileToIgnore.txt however this is not how SVN's ignore feature works.

3- The `svn:global-ignores` property. Requires SVN 1.8 (June 2013):

This is similar to svn:ignore, except it makes use of SVN 1.8's "inherited properties" feature.
Compare to svn:ignore, the file pattern is automatically applied in every descendant directory (not just immediate children).
- This means that is unnecessary to set svn:global-ignores with the --recursive flag, as inherited ignore file patterns are automatically applied as they're inherited.

Running the same set of commands as in the previous example, but using svn:global-ignores instead:

cd ~/myRepoRoot                                    # Open an existing repo
echo "foo" > "ignoreThis.txt"                       # Create a file called "ignoreThis.txt"
svn status                                         # Check to see if the file is ignored or not
> ?    ./ignoreThis.txt
> 1 unversioned file                               # ...it is NOT currently ignored

svn propset svn:global-ignores "ignoreThis.txt" .
svn status
> 0 unversioned files                              # ...but now the file is ignored!

cd subdirectory                                    # now open a subdirectory
echo "foo" > "ignoreThis.txt"                       # create another file named "ignoreThis.txt"
svn status
> 0 unversioned files                              # the file is ignored here too!

For TortoiseSVN users:

This whole arrangement was confusing for me, because TortoiseSVN's terminology (as used in their Windows Explorer menu system) was initially misleading to me - I was unsure what the significance of the Ignore menu's "Add recursively", "Add *" and "Add " options. I hope this post explains how the Ignore feature ties-in to the SVN Properties feature. That said, I suggest using the command-line to set ignored files so you get a feel for how it works instead of using the GUI, and only using the GUI to manipulate properties after you're comfortable with the command-line.

Listing files that are ignored:

The command svn status will hide ignored files (that is, files that match an RGA global-ignores pattern, or match an immediate parent directory's svn:ignore pattern or match any ancesor directory's svn:global-ignores pattern.

Use the --no-ignore option to see those files listed. Ignored files have a status of I, then pipe the output to grep to only show lines starting with "I".

The command is:

svn status --no-ignore | grep "^I"

For example:

svn status
> ? foo                             # An unversioned file
> M modifiedFile.txt                # A versioned file that has been modified

svn status --no-ignore
> ? foo                             # An unversioned file
> I ignoreThis.txt                  # A file matching an svn:ignore pattern
> M modifiedFile.txt                # A versioned file that has been modified

svn status --no-ignore | grep "^I"
> I ignoreThis.txt                  # A file matching an svn:ignore pattern

ta-da!