Eclipse SVN Subversive: how to ignore all files of type .*

Question

In eclipse: Preferences > Team > Ignored Resources > Add Pattern...

I have added the pattern: .*

However when I synchronize my project with SVN I still see files like .settings , .classpath , .project ...

That's not what I would expect... what is going on here and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

If the files have been added to the repository already, they do not honour the Ignored resources settings. If you really want to stop following the changes, you need to remove them from the repository - by hand. First mark them ignored in the GUI and commit the ignore changes. Then to remove the files on Unix:

svn checkout yourrepourl adirectory
cd adirectory
svn rm .project .settings .classpath
svn commit

Then you need to import the project again from the repository to your Eclipse workspace - updating will most probably fail, as the necessary Eclipse project metadata files were removed in the repository, but still exist in the workspace. Then make sure that they are not going into the repository.

In the future, make sure you do not commit any files you want to ignore - removing them later is much harder.