Question

What is the best (or as good as possible) general SVN ignore pattern to use?

There are a number of different IDE, editor, compiler, plug-in, platform, etc. specific files and some file types that ‘overlap’ (i.e. desirable for some types projects and not for others).

There are however, a large number of file types that you just never want included in source control automatically regardless the specifics of your development environment.

The answer to this question would serve as a good starting point for any project – only requiring them to add the few environment specific items they need. It could be adapted for other Version Control Systems (VCS) as well.

Answer 1

I’ll add my own two cents to this question:

I use the following SVN ignore pattern with TortoiseSVN and Subversion CLI for native C++, C#/VB.NET, and PERL projects on both Windows and Linux platforms. It works well for me!

Formatted for copy and paste:

 *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store thumbs.db Thumbs.db *.bak *.class *.exe *.dll *.mine *.obj *.ncb *.lib *.log *.idb *.pdb *.ilk *.msi* .res *.pch *.suo *.exp *.*~ *.~* ~*.* cvs CVS .CVS .cvs release Release debug Debug ignore Ignore bin Bin obj Obj *.csproj.user *.user *.generated.cs 

Formatted for readability:

 *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store thumbs.db  Thumbs.db *.bak *.class *.exe *.dll *.mine *.obj *.ncb *.lib *.log  *.idb *.pdb *.ilk *.msi* .res *.pch *.suo  *.exp *.*~ *.~* ~*.* cvs  CVS .CVS .cvs   release Release debug Debug ignore Ignore bin Bin obj  Obj *.csproj.user *.user *.generated.cs