How to deal best with SVN and local changes, that should not be committed?

Question

I have checked out some projects from SVN repository. To build those projects I have to adjust some configurations (e.g. the classpath and property files) to fit the local enviroment.

Now I don't want to commit those changes to the repository. So setting an svn:ignore may help. But what if I want to get updates from the repository without committing those files? Is there any option that allows me to get updates and prevents me from committing?

Or what is the best way to deal with local changes? With my application projects I may configure eclipse's launch configurations to lauchn them with the settings fitting to my local enviroment and let the checked-out files untouched. But what to do with projects that won't be launched?

Thanks in advance.

Berretta

This is a pretty frequent question with Subversion - see #2779793 – Steinbach

Answer 1

Just put templates for those configuration/property files into svn. The application should expect different files so you have to create your own and of course set the to svn:ignore...so you can get updates to the templates which you can migrate to the real configuration files...for convenience you can create a shell/batch file the first setup of those configuration files.

Lase

I think thats a good idea. Another for sharing the classpath: use classpath variables to avoid conflicts relating to different local file system layouts. – Berretta

Answer 2

Whilst slightly off topic (in the sense that it avoids the SVN issue), I've dealt with this in the past by putting host sensitive settings in a config file, which is automatically included at runtime based on the active hostname.

That said, hopefully someone will know of a way to deal with this within SVN without using some custom pre-commit hook scripts, etc.

Tangential