Problem with propset svn:ignore - possibly Vista related

Question

As I understand it, the command to ignore the content of a directory using SVN is this:

svn propset svn:ignore "*" tmp/

This should set the ignore property on the content of the tmp directory, right? In other words, the wildcard is set to be the ignore value on the tmp directory. Trouble is, here's what is happening on my Windows box:

> svn propset svn:ignore "*" ./tmp
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'app'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'config'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'db'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'doc'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'lib'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'log'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'nbproject'
property 'svn:ignore' set on 'public'
[etc...]

That's not right. Am I doing something wrong (or perhaps going insane), or is my svn on Windows broken?

Some notes:

• The machine is running Windows Vista SP1
• Setting this property via Tortoise works perfectly.
• I'm using the Collabnet binaries for Windows:

> svn --version
svn, version 1.5.2 (r32768)
compiled Aug 28 2008, 19:05:34

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Update: I've have just tried this on a Windows XP machine and it works as expected. So either this is a Vista specific issue, or there is a problem with my Vista configuration. Is anyone else able to reproduce this problem on Vista? I have just spotted that Vista isn't listed as one of the supported platforms on the CollabNet downloads page.

Answer 1

It looks like Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have changed the behavior of wildcard expansion in Windows Vista:

So instead of an escaped wildcard being passed in, it gets expanded:

Under Win 95, 98, 2000, XP, the application runs as expected: it does wildcard expansion when parameters are like «*.txt» and it does NOT when parameters are like «"*.txt"». Under Windows Vista, wildcard expansion takes place always, or, said otherwise, double quotation marks DOES NOT suppress it.

There is further discussion on this issue on the Collabnet forum.