The Inspector

The inspector is displayed by selecting View > Show Inspector (key equivalent ⌘I) or clicking in the toolbar.

The inspector groups information into sections such as General, Working Copy and Properties. Each section can be collapsed and expanded as needed to maximize the available screen space for your current task.

General

Name

The name of the selected item, or the number of items if multiple items are selected.

Size/Total Size

The size of the file. A size is not displayed for folders. If multiple items are selected then this equals their total size.

Revision

The item’s revision. A revision is not shown for unversioned items.

Where

The location of the item on your Mac. Paths within your home folder are shown as a relative path prefixed with a tilde character (~).

Modified

The date this item was last modified.

For modified items this date is the item’s last modification date in the file system. For unmodified items this is the date in the repository, i.e. when the item’s BASE revision was committed.

Committed

The date at which the item’s BASE revision was committed. A date is not shown if the item is unversioned or scheduled for addition.

Author

The name of the person who committed the item’s BASE revision. An author may not be shown if the repository permits users to connect anonymously.

Depth

The currently configured depth of the folder. One of:

All files and folders at all levels The folder will automatically retrieve all files and folders at all levels when updated.
Immediate files and folders only Changes to files and folders located immediately within the selected folder will be obtained during updates. New folders will be retrieved but their contents will not.
Immediate files only Only new and changed files located immediately within the folder will be retrieved.
Folder only The folder is an empty placeholder. No contents will be retrieved on update until the folder’s depth is changed.

Status

Text

The status of the file’s contents. No value is shown for folders or unmodified files.

Properties

The status of the item’s properties. No value is shown if the properties are unmodified.

Tree

The tree conflict status of the item. No value is shown if the item does not have a tree conflict.

Switched

The switched status of the folder. No value is shown if the item is a file or has not been switched.

Working Copy

Format

The file format version of the working copy. This value corresponds to the version of Subversion that was used to check out the working copy.

This value applies to the working copy as a whole.

By Default (Update Contents of Externals)

This checkbox controls whether the contents of the working copy’s externals are updated when the working copy itself is updated. Unchecking this value will shorten the time it takes to update the working copy but may leave externals out of date.

This value applies to the Update to Latest Revision command. It also serves as the default for the equivalent option displayed by the Update... command.

This value applies to the working copy as a whole.

Your working copy may depend on a particular version of an external to function or build correctly. If you do not include externals by default in your updates then you can introduce inconsistencies into your project.

Exercise care when disabling Update contents of externals. Be sure to monitor the changes made to your project’s external dependencies and manually update your working copy’s externals as necessary.

Repository

This section displays the status of the item in the repository. Only part of this information is available if the repository status is not shown for the working copy (see View > Show Repository Status).

The repository status values (text, properties, revision, date and author) describe the state of the latest version in the repository when compared against the working copy. No values are shown if the working copy’s revision is the same as the repository’s.

Repository

The URL of the repository the working copy was checked out from.

Name

The name of the item in the repository. This may differ from the name of the working copy, e.g. “trunk” is often checked out to a folder with a more meaningful name.

A value is not shown for unversioned items.

Where

The location of the item in the repository displayed as a path relative to the repository. A value is not shown for unversioned items.

Text

The status of the file’s contents.

Properties

The status of the item’s properties.

Revision

The item’s latest revision in the repository.

Date

The date when the item’s latest revision was committed.

Author

The name of the author who committed the latest revision to this item.

Lock

This section shows information about the item’s lock. The lock’s details are not shown when the status is Not locked.

Status

The status of the file’s lock. One of:

Not locked The file is not locked.
Locked The file is locked by another user.
Owned The file is locked and the lock is owned by this working copy.
Broken The file was locked by this working copy but has since been unlocked by another user. The file is currently unlocked.
Stolen The file was locked by this working copy but has since been locked by another user. The file is currently locked.

Created

The date when the lock was created, i.e. when the file was locked.

Expires

The date when the lock will expire.

While Subversion supports locks with expiry dates, as of version 1.8 it is not possible to specify an expiry date when creating a lock with Cornerstone or the svn command line tool. A value will therefore never be shown.

This field is provided to accommodate expiry date support in future versions of Subversion.

Comment

The comment given by the user that created the lock.

Properties

The fields in the inspector’s Properties section show item’s standard Subversion properties. You can edit the properties of multiple items when those items are all the same type (i.e. files or folders).

The set of properties displayed depends on the type of item: keywords, line breaks, mime type, needs lock and executable are shown for files; ignore and externals are shown for folders.

Keywords

The keyword names are displayed as tokens similar to e-mail addresses in Apple’s Mail app.

To add a keyword:

  1. Click in the field to activate it and start typing the name of the keyword. An auto-complete list will be displayed. To accept the suggestion press the Return (⏎) key or type to the end of the word and press the Space key.

  2. Once accepted, the keyword is displayed as a blue button.

  3. Continue typing to enter the next keyword.

To delete a keyword, either select the keyword button with the mouse or place the insertion point to the right of the button and press the Delete (⌫) key.

You can also use the keyword menu () located next to the field to select from the list of available keywords. The selected keyword will be inserted at the current cursor location.

This value is stored in the svn:keywords property.

Line Breaks

Select how line breaks are processed when transmitting the file to or from the repository.

If you are sharing the file with team members working on Windows then you should consider setting this property to Convert to system. If all team members are working on a Mac (or other Unix-like operating system such as Linux, FreeBSD or OpenBSD) then you can leave this property set to the default value of Do nothing.

This value is stored as the svn:eol-style property.

MIME Type

Select the file’s MIME type from the popup list. If file’s MIME type is not available in the list then type the value into the field.

This value is stored as the svn:mime-type property.

Executable

Set this field to Yes for scripts that should be marked as executable in the file system whenever the file is checked out or updated. Subversion will automatically set this property to Yes for executable files when they are added to the working copy.

This value is stored as the svn:executable property.

Needs Lock

Set this field to Yes if the file should be marked as read-only in the file system until locked.

See the Locking entry in the terminology section for more information.

This value is stored as the svn:needs-lock property.

Ignore

The ignore patterns are displayed as tokens similar to e-mail addresses in Apple’s Mail app.

To add a pattern:

  1. Click in the field to activate it and start typing the pattern. You may include wildcard characters such as * and ?. To accept the suggestion press the Return (⏎) key.

  2. Once accepted, the pattern is displayed as a blue button.

Note that ignore patterns are case-sensitive.

To delete a pattern, either select the pattern button with the mouse or place the insertion point to the right of the button and press the Delete (⌫) key.

Individual items can be ignored using the Ignore command on the items’ context menu.

It is only possible to ignore unversioned files, i.e. files which are under version control (including those scheduled to be added) can no longer be ignored.

To ignore a file scheduled to be added:

  1. Unschedule addition of the file using the Revert command.
  2. The file will be shown as unversioned.
  3. Use the Ignore command to ignore the file.

Wildcard patterns are not inherited by a folder’s sub-folders. If you want to ignore items across an entire folder hierarchy then you will have to

  1. add the ignore pattern to each sub-folder; or

  2. add the ignore pattern to your global ignore list.

    You can do this in the Cornerstone’s preferences or by editing your Subversion configuration (see Help > Subversion Documentation for information on how to do this).

This value is stored as the svn:ignore property.

Externals

The externals table displays the entries from the folder’s svn:externals properties.

Click the Open Externals button to open an editor for the folder’s externals or select Open Externals from the File menu (key equivalent ⇧⌘X).

This value is stored as the svn:externals property.

User Properties

The inspector can be extended to show additional fields for user properties. See the User Properties section for more information.

Options

Open With

Select the app which should be used as the external editor for the selected item. The external editor is opened when an item is double-clicked in the working copy browser view.

Click the Change All... button to use the app as the default external editor for all items of the selected type.

Reverting Properties

A property which has been changed since the last update or commit is described as modified and is indicated by .

To revert a modified property to a pristine copy of it’s BASE revision:

  1. When the mouse is over the inspector the indicator will be displayed as a button .

  2. Click the button to display a menu.

  3. Select the Revert to Last Update command.

  4. The property’s modified value is replaced with the property’s BASE value.

  5. Click Save Changes.