Not commiting my own mainfile - Please help me !!!

B.8. Ignore files which are already versioned
If you accidentally added some files which should have been ignored, how do you get them out of version control without losing them? Maybe you have your own IDE configuration file which is not part of the project, but which took you a long time to set up just the way you like it.

If you have not yet committed the add, then all you have to do is use TortoiseSVN → Revert... to undo the add. You should then add the file(s) to the ignore list so they don't get added again later by mistake.

If the files are already in the repository, you have to do a little more work.

Move the file to somewhere safe, not inside your working copy.

TortoiseSVN → Commit the parent folder. TortoiseSVN will see that the file is missing and you can mark it for deletion from the repository.

Move the file back to its original location.

Add the file to the ignore list so you don't get into the same trouble again.


If you need to remove a whole folder/hierarchy from version control, the procedure is different again.

TortoiseSVN → Export the folder to somewhere safe, not inside your working copy.

TortoiseSVN → Delete the folder from your working copy.

TortoiseSVN → Commit the deleted folder to remove it from the repository.

Move the exported folder back to its original location in your working copy.

Add the folder to the ignore list so you don't get into the same trouble again

Dave_L wrote:
Another approach could be to not include a mainfile.php in the distribution package; the file would be created during installation. But that introduces another complication: the directory containing mainfile.php would have to be writable.

I have only worked with SVN/CVS a little, so I export a copy of my sandbox to my local server for testing. When I'm happy with it, I merge the changes into my sandbox copy, then commit to the repository.

So the best thing is probably to accept that our mainfile on the SVN will get changed from time to time, but we can live with it. We can always revert the changes, it's no big deal...