Subversion: prevent local modifications to one file from being committed

svn

I have a Subversion working copy where I made some local modifications to one file. The modifications are only relevant to me, I do not want to commit them. (The version in the repository contains some default values which are suitable for the other users, just not for me, which is why I want to override them locally.)

Note that although I do not want to commit my changes, I do want to receive any updates made in the repository when I do svn update. Also, it is only in my working copy that I do not want to commit the changes to that file, the other users should not be affected. So svn:ignore or commit hooks do not fit my purpose.

Currently, I simply do:

svn commit file1 file2...

where I specify explicitly the files that have changes excluding the particular file that I do not want to commit.

However, while I'm working, I have the habit of simply writing:

svn commit -m "Log of what I just did"

and I fear that I will inadvertently commit the "forbidden" file by using the above command at a moment when I'm not attentive.

In short, what I'm looking for is simply a way of "marking" a file in a working copy which prevents Subversion from committing the changes in that file (it doesn't have to be automatic exclusion, even if I just get an error when I try to commit all files, it is fine). Sort of like marking files in a "conflict" state…

Does such a thing exist?

Update: akent, thanks for pointing out this very similar question.

Best Answer

There have been a few answers that can work:

  1. Create a pre-commit hook script that reject the commit when a specific property is being added. You can then add this property to files in the working copy to prevent commits.
  2. TortoiseSVN will exclude files in the special changelist "ignore-on-commit". However, this is not honored by the SVN command-line client.

CoverosGene suggested that the default commands such as svn commit operate on a default changelist, such that you can exclude a file if you assign it to another changelist, but I can't find any reference of that in the documentation, and in my testing this does not work.

Since there is no good solution for the SVN command-line client, I've opened an enhancement request here. The request suggests that the command-line client could also honor the "ignore-on-commit" changelist.

Update: This is now issue 2858 and there is a feature outline to handle it with an svn:hold property.

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