Can .cvsignore exclude patterns found in recursive subdirectories?

Question

Can I create a single .cvsignore file to exclude specific patterns for the current directory and recursively for all subdirectories? Basically I want to say at the top of my cvs module to exclude all *.swp or *.bak files instead of having to create a new .cvsignore for each subdirectory.

I suppose this behavior would be similar to that of mercurial's .hgignore file.

Answer 1

CVS docs list several solutions. In your case the following applies the best if you can access the $CVSROOT on the server:

• The per-repository list in $CVSROOT/CVSROOT/cvsignore is appended to the list, if that file exists.

If you cannot access the $CVSROOT, then you can use other options listed there, such as:

• The per-user list in .cvsignore in your home directory is appended to the list, if it exists.

or

• Any entries in the environment variable $CVSIGNORE is appended to the list.