How do I specify a negative pattern in an svn:ignore value

Question

I'm using SVN as my VCS. I have a folder where I keep user-uploaded files. Obviously I don't need those under version control. However, there is a single file in the folder, which I need - .htaccess.

It's already under version control, but how do I specify that I need all other files besides .htaccess ignored in that folder?

I've come across this article: ThoughtsPark.org: Using negative patterns for Subversion's svn:ignore property , but the approach given is kind of cryptic to me and I'm not able to get it working.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Subversion will not apply the patterns in svn:ignore to already versioned files. So in your example the pattern * should be OK. Just ignore everything unversioned.

Answer 2

The idea is that you make a file pattern which matches all files, except .htaccess. In the article, they use character classes to make such a pattern.

Eg

[^a]*

Matches any file which first letter is not an a. This won't work if you specify the full .htaccess filename like this, but the following may work for you:

[^.]*

This will ignore any file not starting with a dot.