It happens to me all the time. I accidentally version a file, I do not want to be versioned (i.e. developer/machine specific config-files).
If I commit this file, I will mess up the paths on all the other developer machines – they will be unhappy.
If I do delete the file from versioning, it will be deleted from the other developers machines – they will be unhappy.
If I choose to never commit the file, I always have a “dirty” checkout – I am unhappy.
Is a clean way to “unversion” a file from revision-control, that will result in no-one being unhappy?
edit: trying to clarify a bit: I have already commited the file to the repository and I want to only remove it from versioning – I specifically do not want it to be physically deleted from everyone doing a checkout. I initially wanted it to be ignored.
Answer: If I could accept a second answer, it would be this. It answers my question with respect to git – the accepted answer is about svn.
SVN version 1.5 supports removing/deleting a file from a repository with out losing the local file
taken from http://subversion.tigris.org/svn_1.5_releasenotes.html
New –keep-local option retains path after delete..
Delete (remove) now takes a –keep-local option to retain its targets locally, so paths will not be removed even if unmodified.