git-ls-files in subdirectories ignore higher-up .gitignore

Hello!

git-ls-files appears to behave in a way that may be unexpected to the users. When run in a subdirectory, git-ls-files never reads .gitignore or whatever is specified by --exclude-per-directory in the parent directories.

This can be demonstrated in git's own repository:

$ touch t/test.o $ git-ls-files --others --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore $ cd t $ git-ls-files --others --exclude-per-directory=.gitignore test.o $

Before I attempt to fix it, I'd like to make sure it's a bug, not a feature.