Re: .git/info/attributes not cloned

From: Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@rea-group.com>
Date: Mar 27, 2008, 04:23 UTC
Message-ID: <47EB213F.1020503@rea-group.com>
In-Reply-To: <20080327033341.GB5417@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 02:08:30PM +1100, Toby Corkindale wrote:
> 
>> If one creates a .git/info/attributes file in a Git repo, it will not be  
>> present in cloned repos.
>> I don't know if this is a bug or not, but it /seems/ wrong behaviour to  
>> me, and reading from the manual pages.
> 
> It is not a bug. The .gitattributes file in your working directory _is_
> cloned, and that is the right place to put things that you want to be
> revision-controlled and used in every repo. The .git/info/attributes
> file is for attributes that are purely local to that repo. This is
> similar to the split between .git/info/exclude and .gitignore.

Ah, OK. I was hoping not to use .gitattributes, as then the attributes are ignored when doing something like: git archive --remote=example.com:/path/to/repo release/v2.1 | tar xf -

> Can you point out which part of the manual gave the wrong impression (or
> better yet, submit a patch making it more clear)?

Now that you've mentioned the difference between info/exclude and .gitignore, I see that in the docs/user-manual.html it is said:

"If you wish the exclude patterns to affect only certain repositories (instead of every repository for a given project), you may instead put them in a file in your repository named .git/info/exclude, or in any file specified by the core.excludesfile configuration variable."

That gives a clue that the /info/ files are repo-specific. However in gitignore(5) and gitattributes(5), there is no explanation of this - it simply mentions that the info version is a higher priority than the .git{ignore,attributes} version.

I suggest that the individual docs/man-pages should mention that too. I'll submit a patch in a separate email, as long as I'm not still misunderstanding the mechanism.

Is there a recommended way to make attributes apply to commands run on a remote repository, or is that a different bug?

thanks, Toby