Thanks for your help, but I still do not know how to get this to work. Perhaps I should give a little background. The project that I mentioned in my original post was a test project created just to learn how to get subversion to work. The production code that I wish to put in one repository resides in 62 directories that have over 2000 files in them of which only some of them can be included otherwise merging becomes impossible. The whole point of this exercise is to get merging to work since it causes unnecessary difficultly to try to separate new features with bug fixes in a single branch. But this is all I could get to work. Unfortunately no matter how much I read (I read the first half of the book twice) and how much I checkout and commit the tool fails to work for me.
And the only reason I have been complaining about the documentation is hoping to point out areas where it is very unclear and misleading. Anyone who knows how to use the tool will never catch on to the poorly written areas of the documentation, they are biased. You NEED someone who doesn't know how to use the tool to indicate areas that need to be addressed. But since no one here is interested to maintaining good documentation and are more interested in hunting out any obscured word they can find just to say "look, it is right!!" it seems best if I never, ever point out any flaws in the documentation. I will just selfishly concern myself with my own problems, it seems all will get along better that way. Now the two suggestions I have are auto properties and in place import. The links provided do not relate to my situation. The provided link indicates properties that get set DURING the import. I need to ignore files BEFORE the import. Like I originally stated, I need to import SOME files. Importing compiler generated files OR user settings causes problem and makes merging impossible thereby defeating some of the benefits of using subversion. If this method will solve this problem can you provide me with a link indicating how to do this? I can not find anything in the book nor the provided link. If you could give me some keywords to search for that would help also. I tried searching and all I find is questions relating to different actions. I looked at the import command in the book and with the svn help command and could not see how to use the svn:ignore. The import-in-place command works on a single file. That would indicate I would need to issue the command hundreds of times. Are you sure this is the only way? It would seem odd that this toll does not provide a way to import an enterprise level application without ignoring the compiler generated files. JM -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Schmidt [mailto:subversion-20...@ryandesign.com] Sent: Friday, August 09, 2013 4:17 PM To: John Maher Cc: Subversion Users Subject: Re: Strange behavior Remember to Reply All so that your message goes to the mailing list too, not just to me. On Aug 9, 2013, at 14:59, John Maher wrote: > Thanks for your reply. I appreciate informing me that subversion is robust. > I was concerned it was getting corrupted by the strange behavior. Plus > you've also helped by telling me that the ignore property does not mean > ignore, it means sometimes ignore. On page 68 of the book it explains that > the ignore property is used to eliminate files from svn status. But your > explanation matches my observations, thank you. The book is wrong again. > > I tried to delete the files from the repository with svn delete, but that > failed because they were not part of the current revision. So it seems that > I have to delete the repository and create it again (for the 3rd time). > > Does import work with the ignore property? It mentions it in the help, but I > do not know if the help is wrong. If properties need to be applied to a > working directory how do I use them with the import command BEFORE a working > copy exists?. I followed the instructions in the book, created a repository > and it came out all wrong, again. > > Can someone tell me how to get code files into the repository and stop the > compiler generated files and directories? > > Thanks > JM Page 68 of the PDF version of the book is within the section "Ignoring Unversioned Items", but the items you're talking about are versioned, not unversioned. "svn import" will obey your svn autoprops: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/svn.advanced.props.html#svn.advanced.props.auto But I often prefer to avoid the "svn import" command and do an "in-place import" instead: http://subversion.apache.org/faq.html#in-place-import This affords you the opportunity to be more selective about what you import and to add properties before committing.
