This instructs Subversion to cache, or not to cache, passwords that are supplied by the user in response to server authentication challenges. The default value is yes. Set this to no to disable this on-disk password caching. You can override this option for a single instance of the svn command using the --no-auth-cache command-line parameter (for those subcommands that support it). For more information, see the section called “Client Credentials Caching”.

This setting is the same as store-passwords, except that it enables or disables disk-caching of all authentication information: usernames, passwords, server certificates, and any other types of cacheable credentials.

This specifies the program Subversion will use to query the user for a log message during a commit operation, such as when using svn commit without either the --message (-m) or --file (-F) options. This program is also used with the svn propedit command—a temporary file is populated with the current value of the property the user wishes to edit, and the edits take place right in the editor program (see the section called “Properties”). This option's default value is empty. The order of priority for determining the editor command is:

The value of any of these options or variables is (unlike diff-cmd) the beginning of a command line to be executed by the shell. Subversion appends a space and the pathname of the temporary file to be edited. The editor should modify the temporary file and return a zero exit code to indicate success.

This specifies the absolute path of a differencing program, used when Subversion generates “diff” output (such as when using the svn diff command). By default Subversion uses an internal differencing library—setting this option will cause it to perform this task using an external program. See the section called “Using External Differencing Tools” for more details on using such programs.

This specifies the absolute path of a three-way differencing program. Subversion uses this program to merge changes made by the user with those received from the repository. By default Subversion uses an internal differencing library—setting this option will cause it to perform this task using an external program. See the section called “Using External Differencing Tools” for more details on using such programs.

This flag should be set to true if the program specified by the diff3-cmd option accepts a --diff-program command-line parameter.

When running the svn status command, Subversion lists unversioned files and directories along with the versioned ones, annotating them with a ? character (see the section called “ svn status ”). Sometimes, it can be annoying to see uninteresting, unversioned items—for example, object files that result from a program's compilation—in this display. The global-ignores option is a list of whitespace-delimited globs which describe the names of files and directories that Subversion should not display unless they are versioned. The default value is *.o *.lo *.la #*# .*.rej *.rej .*~ *~ .#* .DS_Store.

As well as svn status , the svn add and svn import commands also ignore files that match the list. You can override this option for a single instance of any of these commands by using the --no-ignore command-line flag. For information on more fine-grained control of ignored items, see the section called “svn:ignore”.

This instructs Subversion to automatically set properties on newly added or imported files. The default value is no, so set this to yes to enable Auto-props. The auto-props section of this file specifies which properties are to be set on which files.

This variable sets the default character set encoding for commit log messages. It's a permanent form of the --encoding option (see the section called “ svn Switches”). The Subversion repository stores log messages in UTF-8, and assumes that your log message is written using your operating system's native locale. You should specify a different encoding if your commit messages are written in any other encoding.

Normally your working copy files have timestamps that reflect the last time they were touched by any process, whether that be your own editor or by some svn subcommand. This is generally convenient for people developing software, because build systems often look at timestamps as a way of deciding which files need to be recompiled.

In other situations, however, it's sometimes nice for the working copy files to have timestamps that reflect the last time they were changed in the repository. The svn export command always places these “last-commit timestamps” on trees that it produces. By setting this config variable to yes, the svn checkout , svn update , svn switch , and svn revert commands will also set last-commit timestamps on files that they touch.