svn ignore without deleting files?

Question

how can I ignore files from my svn repo without deleting them as well?

When I work on existing projects I often have to setup a local version of the project and using my local database as well. With drupal for instance, I checkout the svn repo, change the settings.php file to match my local database, but now I have to make sure I do not commit the settings file again.

Is there any clever svn command that will fix this?

Answer 1

From the SVN Help:

I have a file in my project that every developer must change, but I don't want those local mods to ever be committed. How can I make 'svn commit' ignore the file?**

The answer is: don't put that file under version control. Instead, put a template of the file under version control, something like "file.tmpl".

Then, after the initial 'svn checkout', have your users (or your build system) do a normal OS copy of the template to the proper filename, and have users customize the copy. The file is unversioned, so it will never be committed. And if you wish, you can add the file to its parent directory's svn:ignore property, so it doesn't show up as '?' in the 'svn status' command.