Re: Change in .gitignore handling: intended or bug?

From: Charles Strahan <charles@cstrahan.com>
Date: Mar 4, 2016, 06:12 UTC
Message-ID: <1457071957.2027843.539286050.10CF8D0A@webmail.messagingengine.com>
In-Reply-To: <20160304055117.GB26609@ikke.info>

I'm on 2.7.0.

Here's a quick sanity check:

├── baz
│   ├── quux
│   │   ├── corge
│   │   │   └── wibble.txt
│   │   └── grault.txt
│   └── waldo.txt
└── foo
    ├── bar.txt
    └── garply.txt

$ git --version git version 2.7.0

$ git status -sb -uall ## Initial commit on master ?? baz/quux/corge/wibble.txt ?? baz/quux/grault.txt ?? baz/waldo.txt ?? foo/bar.txt ?? foo/garply.txt

For the lazy (such as myself), this will set up an identical tree:

mkdir -p foo mkdir -p baz/quux/corge touch foo/bar.txt touch foo/garply.txt touch baz/waldo.txt touch baz/quux/grault.txt touch baz/quux/corge/wibble.txt cat <<"EOF" > .gitignore * !/foo !/foo/bar.txt !/baz !/baz/quux !/baz/quux/**/* EOF

I just checked https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore and the example at the bottom suggests that this behavior may be expected:

    $ cat .gitignore
    # exclude everything except directory foo/bar
    /*
    !/foo
    /foo/*
    !/foo/bar

Note the /foo/*, explicitly ignoring the entries below /foo.

This wasn't always the case, though, so I'd love to hear if it was intentional (or if I've lost my mind, which is quite possible).

-Charles

On Fri, Mar 4, 2016, at 12:51 AM, Kevin Daudt wrote:

Show 80 quoted lines

> On Thu, Mar 03, 2016 at 09:11:56PM -0500, Charles Strahan wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I've found a change in the way .gitignore works, and I'm not sure if
> > it's a bug
> > or intended.
> > 
> > Previously, one could use the following .gitignore:
> > 
> >     *
> >     !/foo
> >     !/foo/bar.txt
> >     !/baz
> >     !/baz/quux
> >     !/baz/quux/**/*
> > 
> > And these files would be seen by git:
> > 
> >     foo/bar.txt
> >     baz/quux/grault.txt
> >     baz/quux/corge/wibble.txt
> > 
> > And these files would be ignored:
> > 
> >     foo/garply.txt
> >     baz/waldo.txt
> > 
> > At some point (between git 2.6.0 and 2.7.0, I think), the behavior
> > changed such
> > that _none_ of the files above would be ignored. Previously, git would
> > treat
> > !/foo as an indication that it should not prune /foo, but that
> > _wouldn't_ be
> > sufficient to un-ignore the contents thereof. Now, it seems the new
> > scheme
> > treats !/foo as functionally equivalent to !/foo followed by !/foo/**/*
> > in the
> > old scheme.
> > 
> > I manage my home directory by making it a git repo, and using
> > ~/.gitignore to
> > selectively permit certain files or subdirectories to be seen by git.
> > The recent
> > change in behavior has resulted in sensitive directories like ~/.gpg
> > being
> > un-ignored. For reference, I've appended my .gitignore to the end of
> > this email.
> > 
> > So, is this behavior intended, or is this a bug? If the former, is there
> > an
> > announcement explaining this change?
> > 
> > -Charles
> > 
> > [snip]
> > --
> > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in
> > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> > More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> 
> Works as intended for me:
> 
> ├── baz
> │   ├── quux
> │   │   ├── corge
> │   │   │   └── wibble.txt
> │   │   └── grault.txt
> │   └── waldo.txt
> └── foo
>     ├── bar.txt
>     └── garply.txt
> 
> $ git status -s -uall
> ?? baz/quux/corge/wibble.txt
> ?? baz/quux/grault.txt
> ?? foo/bar.txt
> 
> garply.txt and waldo.txt are ignore, but the rest is still tracked.
> 
> I'm on 2.7.2.