How to ignore directories/files in Subversion?

To ignore files in subversion you want to set the svn:ignore property. You can see more here http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.8/svn.advanced.props.special.ignore.html about half way down.

To ignore the target folder from your project folder run

svn propset svn:ignore target .

Alternatively to edit a list of ignored files folders run

svn propedit svn:ignore .

Before committing code to the Subversion repository we always set the svn:ignore property on the directory to prevent some files and directories to be checked in. We always exclude the IDE project files and the target/ directory. Instead of keeping all of the excludes in mind all the time it's useful to put them all in a file and reference the file with the -F option:

svn propset svn:ignore -F .svnignore .

Put this file in the project folder

.svnignore
target/*