Question

If I svn:ignore a really big folder will it improve performance during SVN updates?

I have this really massive (>600MB) folder in my project. The files in this folder should not be changing at all. The problem is that every time I call “svn update” it takes forever. Is there a way to ignore this folder during updates to speed up the update process?

Answer 1

The svn:ignore is only for files that are not already in the Subversion repository. This folder already is.

You can use the svn update --set-depth exclude folderName to remove this folder from your working directory:

$ svn update --set-depth exclude bigFolder  #Removes "bigFolder" from workdir
D bigFolder

$

Next time you do an update, bigFolder won’t show up in your working directory. If you want it back, you’ll have to reset the depth:

$ svn update --set-depth infinity
U bigFolder
U bigFolder/File1
U bigFolder/File2
...