To find out what the different settings are for, just leave your
mouse pointer a second on the editbox/checkbox... and a helpful
tooltip will popup.
General Settings
Figure 5.41. The Settings Dialog, General Page
This dialog allows you to specify your preferred language,
and the Subversion-specific settings.
Language
Selects your user interface language.
What else did you expectЁ
Automatically check for newer versions every week
If checked, TortoiseSVN will contact its download site once a week
to see if there is a newer version of the program available.
Use Check now if you want an answer
right away. The new version will not be downloaded; you
simply receive an information dialog telling you that the
new version is available.
System sounds
TortoiseSVN has three custom sounds which are installed by default.
Error
Notice
Warning
You can select different sounds (or turn these sounds
off completely) using the Windows Control Panel.
Configure is a shortcut to the Control Panel.
Global ignore pattern
Global ignore patterns are used to prevent unversioned files from
showing up e.g. in the commit dialog. Files matching the
patterns are also ignored by an import.
Ignore files or directories by typing in the names or extensions.
Patterns are separated by spaces e.g.
*/bin */obj *.bak *.~ЁЁ *.jar *.[Tt]mp.
The first two entries refer to directories, the
other four to files.
These patterns use filename globbing. Read
the section called “Filename Globbing in Ignore Lists” for more information.
Note that the ignore patterns you specify here will also
affect other Subversion clients running on your PC, including
the command line client.
Caution
If you use the Subversion configuration file to set
a global-ignores pattern, it will
override the settings you make here. The Subversion
configuration file is accessed using the
Edit as described below.
This ignore pattern will affect all your projects.
It is not versioned, so it will not affect other users.
By contrast you can also use the versioned
svn:ignore property to exclude
files or directories from version control. Read
the section called “Ignoring Files And Directories”
for more information.
Set filedates to the "last commit time"
This option tells TortoiseSVN to set the filedates to
the last commit time when doing a checkout or an update.
Otherwise TortoiseSVN will use the current date.
If you are developing software it is generally best
to use the current date because build systems normally
look at the datestamps to decide which files need
compiling. If you use "last commit time" and revert
to an older file revision, your project may not compile
as you expect it to.
Subversion configuration file
Use Edit to edit the
Subversion configuration file directly.
Some settings cannot be modified directly by
TortoiseSVN, and need to be set here instead.
For more information about the Subversion
config file see the
Subversion Manual.
The section on
Automatic Property Setting
is of particular interest, and that is configured here.
Note that Subversion can read configuration information
from several places, and you need to know which one
takes priority. Refer to
Configuration and the Windows Registry to find out more.
Use "_svn" instead of ".svn" directories
VS.NET when used with web projects can't handle the .svn
folders that Subversion uses to store its internal information.
This is not a bug in Subversion. The bug is in VS.NET and the frontpage
extensions it uses. Read the section called “Subversion Working Folders”
to find out more about this issue.
If you want to change the behaviour of Subversion and TortoiseSVN,
you can use this checkbox to set the environment variable which
controls this.
You should note that changing this option will not automatically
convert existing working copies to use the new admin directory.
You will have to do that yourself using a script (See our FAQ)
or simply check out a fresh working copy.
Look and Feel Settings
Figure 5.42. The Settings Dialog, Look and Feel Page
This page allows you to specify which of the TortoiseSVN context menu
entries will show up in the main context menu, and which will appear
in the TortoiseSVN submenu. By default most items are checked and
appear in the submenu.
If you have a very large number of files in your working copy
folders, it can take a long time before the context menu appears
when you right click on a folder. This is because
Subversion fetches the status for all files when you ask for
folder status. To avoid this delay you can uncheck the
Fetch status for context menu
box. Be warned that the context menu for folders will not always
be correct, and may include items which should not really be there.
For example, you will see
TortoiseSVN → Show Log
for an Added folder, which will not work because
the folder is not yet in the repository.
The option Enable accelerators on the top level menu
has three states:
Unchecked (default)
In this state the menu items are all drawn by TortoiseSVN. No
accelerator keys are shown.
Checked
This activates the accelerators for TortoiseSVN commands,
but of course these may conflict with the accelerators for anything
else in the explorer context menu. Pressing the shortcut key
multiple times will cycle through the matching context menu items.
In this state, the menu items are drawn by Windows which makes
the icons look ugly.
Indeterminate
In this mode the accelerator keys are active and the menu items
are drawn in text only mode without icons.
Icon Overlay Settings
Figure 5.43. The Settings Dialog, Look and Feel Page
This page allows you to choose the items for which TortoiseSVN will
display icon overlays. Network drives can be very slow, so by default
icons are not shown for working copies located on network shares.
You can even disable all icon overlays, but where's the fun in thatЁ
USB Flash drives appear to be a special case in that the drive type
is identified by the device itself. Some appear as fixed drives,
and some as removable drives.
By default, overlay icons will appear in all open/save dialogs
as well as in Windows Explorer. If you want them to appear
only in Windows Explorer, check the
Show overlays only in explorer box.
Since it takes quite a while to fetch the status of a working copy,
TortoiseSVN uses a cache to store the status in so the explorer
doesn't get hogged too much when showing the overlays.
You can choose which type of cache TortoiseSVN should use according
to your system and working copy size here:
Default
Caches all status information in a separate process
(TSVNCache.exe). That process
watches all drives for changes and fetches the status
again if files inside a working copy get modified.
The process runs with the least possible priority so
other programs don't get hogged because of it. That
also means that the status information is not
realtime but it can take a few
seconds for the overlays to change.
Advantage: the overlays show the status recursively,
i.e. if a file deep inside a working copy is modified,
all folders up to the working copy root will also
show the modified overlay. And since the process can
send notifications to the shell, the overlays on the left
treeview usually change too.
Disadvantage: the process runs constantly, even if you're not
working on your projects. It also uses around 10-50 MB of RAM
depending on number and size of your working copies.
Shell
Caching is done directly inside the shell extension
dll, but only for the currently visible folder.
Each time you navigate to another folder, the status
information is fetched again.
Advantage: needs only very little memory (around 1 MB of RAM)
and can show the status in realtime.
Disadvantage: Since only one folder is cached, the overlays
don't show the status recursively. For big working copies,
it can take more time to show a folder in explorer than
with the default cache. Also the mime-type column is not
available.
None
With this setting, the TortoiseSVN does not fetch the status
at all in Explorer. Because of that, files don't get an overlay
and folders only get a 'normal' overlay if they're versioned.
No other overlays are shown, and no extra columns are available
either.
Advantage: uses absolutely no additional memory and does
not slow down the Explorer at all while browsing.
Disadvantage: Status information of files and folders is not
shown in Explorer. To see if your working copies are modified,
you have to use the "Check for modifications" dialog.
If you select the default option, you can also choose to mark folders as
modified if they contain unversioned items. This could be useful for
reminding you that you have created new files which are not yet versioned.
The Exclude Paths are used to tell TortoiseSVN
those paths for which it should not show icon
overlays and status columns.
This is useful if you have some very big working copies containing
only libraries which you won't change at all and therefore don't
need the overlays. For example:
f:\development\SVN\Subversion will disable
the overlays only on that specific folder. You
still can see the overlays on all files and folder inside that folder.
f:\development\SVN\Subversion* will disable the
overlays on all files and folders whose path
starts with f:\development\SVN\Subversion. That
means you won't see overlays for any files and folders below that
path.
The same applies to the Include Paths. Except that
for those paths the overlays are shown even if the overlays are disabled
for that specific drive type, or by an exclude path specified above.
TSVNCache.exe also uses these paths to restrict its scanning. If you
want it to look only in particular folders, disable all drive types
and include only the folders you specifically want to be scanned.
Icon Set Selection
Figure 5.44. The Settings Dialog, Icon Set Page
You can change the overlay icon set to the one you like best.
Note that if you change overlay set, you may have to restart
your computer for the changes to take effect.
TortoiseSVN Dialog Settings 1
Figure 5.45. The Settings Dialog, Dialogs 1 Page
This dialog allows you to configure some of TortoiseSVN's
dialogs the way you like them.
Default number of log messages
Limits the number of log messages that TortoiseSVN
fetches when you first select
TortoiseSVN → Show Log
Useful for slow server connections. You can always use
Get All or
Next 100 to get more messages.
Font for log messages
Selects the font face and size used to display the log
message itself in the middle pane of the Revision Log
dialog, and when composing log messages in the Commit
dialog.
Short date / time format in log messages
If the standard long messages use up too much
space on your screen use the short format.
Progress Dialog
TortoiseSVN can automatically close all progress dialogs
when the action is finished without error. This setting
allows you to select the conditions for closing the
dialogs. The default (recommended) setting is
Close manually
which allows you to review all messages and check what
has happened. However, you may decide that you want to
ignore some types of message and have the dialog
close automatically if there are no critical changes.
Auto-close if no merges, adds or deletes
means that the progress dialog will close if there were
simple updates, but if changes from the repository were
merged with yours, or if any files were added or deleted,
the dialog will remain open. It will also stay open if
there were any conflicts or errors during the operation.
Auto-close if no merges, adds or deletes for
local operations means that the progress dialog
will close as for Auto-close if no merges, adds
or deletes but only for local operations like adding
files or reverting changes. For remote operations the
dialog will stay open.
Auto-close if no conflicts
relaxes the criteria further and will close the dialog
even if there were merges, adds or deletes. However,
if there were any conflicts or errors, the dialog
remains open.
Auto-close if no errors
always closes the dialog even if there were conflicts.
The only condition that keeps the dialog open is an
error condition, which occurs when Subversion is unable
to complete the task. For example, an update fails
because the server is inaccessible, or a commit fails
because the working copy is out-of-date.
Use URL of WC as the default "From:" URL
In the merge dialog, the default behaviour is for the
From: URL to be remembered between
merges. However, some people like to perform merges from
many different points in their hierarchy, and find it easier
to start out with the URL of the current working copy.
This can then be edited to refer to a parallel path on
another branch.
TortoiseSVN Dialog Settings 2
Figure 5.46. The Settings Dialog, Dialogs 2 Page
Recurse into unversioned folders
If this box is checked (default state), then whenever
the status of an unversioned folder is shown in the
Add,
Commit or
Check for Modifications dialog,
every child file and folder is also shown.
If you uncheck this box, only the unversioned parent is shown.
Unchecking reduces clutter in these dialogs. In that case if you
select an unversioned folder for Add, it is added recursively.
Use autocompletion of filepaths and keywords
The commit dialog includes a facility to parse the list
of filenames being committed. When you type the first 3
letters of an item in the list, the autocompletion
box pops up, and you can press Enter to complete the
filename. Check the box to enable this feature.
Timeout in seconds to stop the autocompletion parsing
The autocompletion parser can be quite slow if there are a lot
of large files to check. This timeout stops the commit dialog
being held up for too long. If you are missing important
autocompletion information, you can extend the timeout.
Only use spellchecker when tsvn:projectlanguage is set
If you don't wish to use the spellchecker for all commits,
check this box. The spellchecker will still be enabled where
the project properties require it.
Max. items to keep in the log message history
TortoiseSVN stores the last 25 log messages you entered for
each repository. You can customize the number stored here.
If you have many different repositories, you may wish to
reduce this to avoid filling your registry.
Re-open commit dialog after a commit failed
When a commit fails for some reason (working copy needs updating,
pre-commit hook rejects commit, network error, etc), you can select
this option to keep the commit dialog open ready to try again.
However, you should be aware that this can lead to problems.
If the failure means you need to update your working copy, and
that update leads to conflicts you must resolve those first.
Contact the repository on startup
The Check for Modifications dialog checks the working copy
by default, and only contacts the repository when you click
Check repository. If you always want
to check the repository, you can use this setting to make that
action happen automatically.
Sort items numerically
The repository browser can use a more intelligent sorting
algorithm which handles paths containing numbers better than
a plain ascii sort. This is sometimes useful for getting
version number tags in the correct order. This option controls
the default sort type used.
TortoiseSVN Colour Settings
Figure 5.47. The Settings Dialog, Colours Page
This dialog allows you to configure the text colours
used in TortoiseSVN's dialogs the way you like them.
Possible or real conflict / obstructed
A conflict has occurred during update, or may occur during merge.
Update is obstructed by an existing unversioned file/folder of
the same name as a versioned one.
This colour is also used for error messages in the progress dialogs.
Added files
Items added to the repository.
Missing / deleted / replaced
Items deleted from the repository, missing from the working
copy, or deleted from the working copy and replaced with
another file of the same name.
Merged
Changes from the repository successfully merged into the WC
without creating any conflicts.
Modified / copied
Add with history, or paths copied in the repository.
Also used in the log dialog for entries which include
copied items.
Deleted node
An item which has been deleted from the repository.
Added node
An item which has been added to the repository, by an add, copy
or move operation.
Renamed node
An item which has been renamed within the repository.
Replaced node
The original item has been deleted and a new item with
the same name replaces it.
Network Settings
Figure 5.48. The Settings Dialog, Network Page
Here you can configure your proxy server, if you need one to get
through your company's firewall.
If you need to set up per-repository proxy settings, you will
need to use the Subversion servers file to
configure this. Use Edit to get there
directly. Consult the
Subversion Manual
for details on how to use this file.
You can also specify which program TortoiseSVN should use to
establish a secure connection to a svn+ssh repository.
We recommend that you use TortoisePlink.exe. This is a version
of the popular Plink program, and is included with TortoiseSVN,
but it is compiled as a Windowless app, so you don't get a DOS
box popping up every time you authenticate.
One side-effect of not having a window is that there is
nowhere for any error messages to go, so if authentication
fails you will simply get a message saying something like
“Unable to write to standard output”.
For this reason we recommend that you first set up using
standard Plink. When everything is working, you can use
TortoisePlink with exactly the same parameters.
External Program Settings
Figure 5.49. The Settings Dialog, Diff Viewer Page
Here you can define your own diff/merge programs that TortoiseSVN
should use. The default setting is to use TortoiseMerge
which is installed alongside TortoiseSVN.
An external diff program may be used for comparing different
revisions of files. The external program will need to
obtain the filenames from the command line, along with
any other command line options. TortoiseSVN uses
substitution parameters prefixed with %.
When it encounters one of these it will substitute the
appropriate value. The order of the parameters will depend
on the Diff program you use.
%base
The original file without your changes
%bname
The window title for the base file
%mine
Your own file, with your changes
%yname
The window title for your file
The window titles are not pure filenames.
TortoiseSVN treats that as a name to display and creates
the names accordingly. So e.g. if you're doing a
diff from a file in revision 123 with a file
in your working copy, the names will be
filename : revision 123
and
filename : working copy
If you use the svn:keywords property to
expand keywords, and in particular the revision
of a file, then there may be a difference between files which
is purely due to the current value of the keyword. Also if you use
svn:eol-style = native the BAsE file will have
pure LF line endings whereas your file will
have CR-LF line endings. TSVN will normally hide
these differences automatically by first parsing the BASE file to
expand keywords and line endings before doing the diff operation.
However, this can take a long time with large files. If
Convert files when diffing against BASE
is unchecked then TSVN will skip pre-processing the files.
Merge Tool
An external merge program used to resolve conflicted
files. Parameter substitution is used in the same way
as with the Diff Program.
%base
the original file without your or
the others changes
%bname
The window title for the base file
%mine
your own file, with your changes
%yname
The window title for your file
%theirs
the file as it is in the repository
%tname
The window title for the file in the repository
%merged
the conflicted file, the result of
the merge operation
Figure 5.50. The Settings Dialog, Diff/Merge Advanced Dialog
In the advanced settings, you can define a different diff and merge
program for every file extension. For instance you could associate
Photoshop as the “Diff” Program for .jpg files :-)
You need to specify just the extension with no leading dot or wildcard.
Use BMP to describe Windows bitmap files,
not*.BMP.
Unified Diff Viewer
A viewer program for unified-diff files (patch files).
No parameters are required.
The Default option is to check for
a file association for .diff files,
and then for .txt files.
If you don't have a viewer for .diff
files, you will most likely get NotePad.
The original Windows NotePad program does not behave
well on files which do not have standard CR-LF
line-endings. Since most unified diff files have pure
LF line-endings, they do not view well in NotePad.
However, you can download a free NotePad replacement
Notepad2
which not only displays the line-endings correctly,
but also colour codes the added and removed lines.
Saved Data Settings
Figure 5.51. The Settings Dialog, Saved Data Page
For your convenience, TortoiseSVN saves many of the settings
you use, and remembers where you have been lately. If you
want to clear out that cache of data, you can do it here.
URL history
Whenever you checkout a working copy, merge changes
or use the repository browser, TortoiseSVN keeps a record
of recently used URLs and offers them in a combo box.
Sometimes that list gets cluttered with outdated URLs
so it is useful to flush it out periodically.
Log messages
TortoiseSVN stores recent commit log messages that you
enter. These are stored per repository, so if you access many
repositories this list can grow quite large.
Dialog sizes and positions
Many dialogs remember the size and screen position that you
last used.
Authentication data
When you authenticate with a Subversion server, the username
and password are cached locally so you don't have to keep
entering them. You may want to clear this for security reasons,
or because you want to access the repository under a different
username ... does John know you are using his PCЁ
If you want to clear auth data for one particular server only,
read the section called “Authentication” for instructions
on how to find the cached data.
Registry Settings
A few infrequently used settings are available only by editing
the registry directly.
Configuration
You can specify a different location for the Subversion
configuration file using registry location
HKCU\Software\TortoiseSVN\ConfigDir.
This will affect all TortoiseSVN operations.
Cache Tray Icon
To add a cache tray icon for the TSVNCache program,
create a DWORD key with a value of 1 at
HKCU\Software\TortoiseSVN\CacheTrayIcon.
This is really only useful for developers as it allows
you to terminate the program gracefully.
Subversion Working Folders
VS.NET when used with web projects can't handle the .svn
folders that Subversion uses to store its internal information.
This is not a bug in Subversion. The bug is in VS.NET and the frontpage
extensions it uses.
As of Version 1.3.0 of Subversion and TortoiseSVN, you can set
the environment variable SVN_ASP_DOT_NET_HACK.
If that variable is set, then Subversion will use _svn
folders instead of .svn folders. You must restart
your shell for that env variable to take effect. Normally that means
rebooting your PC. To make this easier, you can now do this from
the general settings page using a simple checkbox -
refer to the section called “General Settings”.
For more information, and other ways to avoid this problem in the
first place, check out the article about this in our
FAQ.
