svn:ignore generated subfolders

Question

I'm always having troubles with svn:ignore, but this time I think I may be attempting something impossible.

assuming dir structure:

/
   /foo
   /bar
   /web
      /uploads
          /assets
          /avatars
              /fu
                  /*.jpg
              /ba
                  /*.jpg
              keepme.jpg
              keepmetoo.jpg

I want to be ignore all subfolders of the avatars directory but not the files of that directory (keepme.jpg, keepmetoo.jpg).

The avatar subfolders (fu, ba) are auto generated and the names cannot be predetermined, so need to completely ignore all /avatar subfolders.

Is this possible? and how?

Edit we would prefer not to use post-commit hooks. This is simply a matter of preference. We have a lot of well established applications and have developed a standardised way of doing things and post commit hooks simply haven't been utilized yet. We would simple prefer not to add any unnecessary additional moving parts. Frankly it is more likely we would address the directory structure (which is no small task) before considering adding post-commit hooks.

Answer 1

You want to store the entire lot in svn, except /avataurs/fu and avatars/ba (all avatars/xxx in fact)?

You need to initially add the remaining directory structure to svn. Use Tortoise to add the root directory, un-check the directories you do not want to add, then commit. that solves the initial problem - of not committing the offending subdirectories, all's good.

Except, the next problem is that you do not want anyone else to 'accidentally' add newly generated subdirectories - in this case, a pre-commit hook is essential. They are very simple indeed - you only need to write a quick batch file or perl script that does aregex on the paths of the incoming files, and return 1 if any contain ".*/avatars/.*/.*" (which will still allow new files to be added to that directory). The hook can also return text that will be displayed to the user who was adding the files. I use one to prevent files being checked in with a file extension on a ban list (eg .obj etc).

If the avatar subdirs never make it into SVN then you'll never check them out - obviously - and your job is done!

---

Here's a copy of my pre-commit.cmd hook file. Just drop it into your hooks directory (on windows) and you're good to go.

@echo off

svnlook changed -t %2 %1 > c:\temp\pre-commit.txt

findstr /G:"%1\hooks\ignore-matches.txt"  c:\temp\pre-commit.txt > c:\temp\precommit-bad.txt
if %ERRORLEVEL% NEQ 0 exit 0

echo disallowed file extension >> c:\temp\precommit-bad.txt

type c:\temp\precommit-bad.txt 1>&2
exit 1

the ignore-matches.txt file contains lines like this:

^[^D].*\.obj$

anything that matches the entries in the ignore-matches.txt file means the commit is rejected,the user will have to try again, correctly this time.

Answer 2

In short, with config-only pure SVN this is not possible. But you have some options for settings those properties, and for checking them, like

• beefing up your avatar auto-generation tool,
• invoke a batch file updating SVN settings after the auto-generation,
• invoke a batch file updating SVN settings before the commit.

On the server side, you can

• reject commits on pre-commit if they do not follow the rules,
• automatically update the settings on the post-commit hook,
• or require smart developers and only check in the CI system.

First, I would recommend to automatically update the svn:ignore property after the auto-generation of the folders. The easiest way would be to invoke a batch-file after doing the generation. The batch-file itself would be simple:

@echo off
echo.>~svnignore
dir /b /aD >~svnignore
svn propset svn:ignore --file ~svnignore .
del ~svnignore

Of course, the file ~svnignore should be a filename which you can guarantee to not use for anything else. If this is invoked automatically upon the generation, this should work for everybody.

Second, I would recommend to check for the integrity either in the pre-commit hook. Doing it in the post-commit may be acceptable, doing it in the continuous integration system will definitely be too late.

Finally, you have another option, though I would not recommend going this route: As you tagged the question with tortoisesvn I assume, you use this tool. This provides you with the additional option to use a client-side pre-commit hook. For this, go into the TortoiseSVN Settings dialog. In the left-side tree you will find an entry Hook Scripts, where you can configure some executables (like batch-files...) to be executed upon certain times, like at pre-commit time.

The disadvantage of this is that you practically break all console usage of SVN, and if you want to have some automation for some builds/tags etc., this will be worthless.

Answer 3

Setting up a start-commit hook could be a solution.