svn propget svn:ignore . returns nothing, but svn is obviously ignoring my files

Question

I'm trying to add an existing iPhone project to a subversion account on unfuddle.com.

Everything seems smooth except for some .a files which are ignored. I know they are ignored because I don't see them in svn status unless I use the --no-ignore flag.

When I run

  svn propget svn:ignore .

I get no output. To make sure I wasn't crazy I ran

  svn propget --xml svn:ignore .

and get this

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<properties>
</properties>

Which means there are no entries in the ignore property?

How do I find where this ignore is coming from?

Cordova

What happens (i.e. what is returned) when you try to svn add a file explicitly? – Monteux

Sounds like a SuperUser question to me... – Joly

I thought problems with development tools were fair game on SO. – Remittent

"svn add" seems to work just fine. It changes the files status from "I" to "A". The commit worked fine as well. I didn't realize you could override the ignore by explicitly naming the file. Thanks! But I'm still curious where this setting is so I can remove *.a files from the ignore list. – Cordova

My comment has been restated and expanded as an answer below. – Monteux

Answer 1

New day. Clear head.

Thanks for the help, it certainly lead me in the right direction.

The answer is there is a default global-ignore list that is built into subversion itself, not the config files, which was where the *.a ignore was coming from.

The global ignores in my config file looked like this:

 #global-ignores = *.o *.lo *.la *.al .libs *.so *.so.[0-9]* *.a *.pyc *.pyo
 # *.rej *~ #*# .#* .*.swp .DS_Store

I figured this was fine, because I didn't want to ignore anything. I was wrong because then subversion enforces its scarcely documented default global-ignores. I changed it to this, note the exclusion of '*.a'

 global-ignores = *.o *.lo *.la *.al .libs *.so *.so.[0-9]* *.pyc *.pyo
  *.rej *~ #*# .#* .*.swp .DS_Store

At this point *.a files are no longer ignores, and my .DS_Store file is still ignored, and all is right in my world.

As GraemeF suggested, propget does not retrieve global values for svn:ignore. As Ether suggested, you can add ignored files by naming them explicitly.

The best link I found was here: http://svn.haxx.se/users/archive-2009-02/0725.shtml

This post says to me that there is a non-empty default value for global-ignores that is used if global-ignores is not set in the config file.

Cordova

Thanks, this worked for me! If you use Syncro SVN, go to Options > Global Run-Time Configuration > Edit 'config' file. Make the changes above, save, restart & refresh. Also, you can see ignored files in the Working copy tab by clicking Show ignored files under the Settings icon at top right in the toolbar. – Daglock

Answer 2

You can explicitly add the file via svn add <filename> if it isn't getting picked up automatically.

Subversion config files can have files ignored ("global-ignores") -- these are usually in ~/.subversion/config and /etc/subversion/config, but there are other locations as well; see http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.4/svn.advanced.confarea.html.

What command were you using to add the files? If it was svn add *, could it be as simple as the file starting with a .?

Monteux

Answer 3

You can also have globally ignored patterns defined in your Subversion configuration file, so maybe *.a is ignored there. See the Config section of the Subversion book.

Remittent

I checked ~/.subversion/config , but the "global-ignores" setting is commented out by default. I thought ignores set in the config would be retrieved in with "svn propget svn:ignore ." – Cordova

I haven't checked, but I don't think a propget would include them because they're not properties on the directory, as such. – Remittent