Hi Eric,

I used the ignore-paths option to ignore a lot of stuff I don’t need. 
The ignore pattern works well, but it could and up in empty commits. So 
just the message without any modifications / changes. The patch below 
skip a commit if all changes are ignored by the ignore-paths option. In 
order to use this feature I includes the option to read configuration 
for ignore-path, include-paths in several lines. So that the user is not 
limited by the max. char. per line definition.
In Addition this patch includes the optimizations which are mansion from 
your side.


Signed-off-by: Lukas Pupka-Lipinski <lukas.pupkalipinski@lpl-mind.de>

---

diff --git a/perl/Git/SVN.pm b/perl/Git/SVN.pm
index 4b28b87784..fa87687306 100644
--- a/perl/Git/SVN.pm
+++ b/perl/Git/SVN.pm
@@ -1188,6 +1188,22 @@ sub find_parent_branch {
      return undef;
  }

+############################################################
+
+=item do_fetch()
+
+Fetch an Commit and returns a log entry
+
+Input:  $path - array of strings (Paths) in a commit
+        $rev - Revision number
+
+Output: $log_entry if successfull
+        null if skipped
+        (die) on fetch error
+
+=cut
+
+############################################################
  sub do_fetch {
      my ($self, $paths, $rev) = @_;
      my $ed;
@@ -1212,6 +1228,11 @@ sub do_fetch {
          }
          $ed = Git::SVN::Fetcher->new($self);
      }
+    my $skip = $ed->is_empty_commit($paths);
+    if ($skip){
+        print "skip commit $rev\n";
+        return;
+    }
      unless ($self->ra->gs_do_update($last_rev, $rev, $self, $ed)) {
          die "SVN connection failed somewhere...\n";
      }
diff --git a/perl/Git/SVN/Fetcher.pm b/perl/Git/SVN/Fetcher.pm
index 64e900a0e9..c414aa879f 100644
--- a/perl/Git/SVN/Fetcher.pm
+++ b/perl/Git/SVN/Fetcher.pm
@@ -31,15 +31,17 @@ sub new {
      # override options set in an [svn-remote "..."] section
      $repo_id = $git_svn->{repo_id};
      my $k = "svn-remote.$repo_id.ignore-paths";
-    my $v = eval { command_oneline('config', '--get', $k) };
-    $self->{ignore_regex} = $v;
+    my @config = eval { command('config', '--get-all', $k) };
+    chomp(@config); # Replace all \n\r on the end
+    $self->{ignore_regex} = join('', @config);

      $k = "svn-remote.$repo_id.include-paths";
-    $v = eval { command_oneline('config', '--get', $k) };
-    $self->{include_regex} = $v;
+    @config = eval { command_oneline('config', '--get-all', $k) };
+    chomp(@config); # Replace all \n\r on the end
+    $self->{include_regex} = join('', @config);

      $k = "svn-remote.$repo_id.preserve-empty-dirs";
-    $v = eval { command_oneline('config', '--get', '--bool', $k) };
+    my $v = eval { command_oneline('config', '--get', '--bool', $k) };
      if ($v && $v eq 'true') {
          $_preserve_empty_dirs = 1;
          $k = "svn-remote.$repo_id.placeholder-filename";
@@ -137,6 +139,37 @@ sub is_path_ignored {
      return 0;
  }

+############################################################
+
+=item is_empty_commit()
+
+Return 1 if all given $paths are ignored, so that this commit end up in 
an empty commit
+
+Input:  $path - array of strings (Paths) in a commit
+
+Output: { 1 if true, 0 if false }
+
+=cut
+
+############################################################
+sub is_empty_commit{
+    my ($self, $paths) = @_;
+    my $path = "";
+    unless (defined($self->{include_regex})){
+        return 0;
+    }
+
+    foreach $path (keys %$paths){
+        unless (defined $path && -d $path ){
+            my $ignored = $self->is_path_ignored($path);
+            if (!$ignored){
+                return 0;
+            }
+        }
+    }
+    return 1;
+}
+
  sub set_path_strip {
      my ($self, $path) = @_;
      $self->{path_strip} = qr/^\Q$path\E(\/|$)/ if length $path;
diff --git a/perl/Git/SVN/Ra.pm b/perl/Git/SVN/Ra.pm
index 56ad9870bc..63be69dc12 100644
--- a/perl/Git/SVN/Ra.pm
+++ b/perl/Git/SVN/Ra.pm
@@ -475,6 +475,8 @@ sub gs_fetch_loop_common {
                  my $log_entry = $gs->do_fetch($paths, $r);
                  if ($log_entry) {
                      $gs->do_git_commit($log_entry);
+                }else{
+                    next;
                  }
                  $Git::SVN::INDEX_FILES{$gs->{index}} = 1;
              }