Re: Git attributes ignored for root directory

From: Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu>
Date: Oct 5, 2011, 12:05 UTC
Message-ID: <4E8C481A.1070808@alum.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <4E8B55FB.1050203@svario.it>

On 10/04/2011 08:52 PM, Gioele Barabucci wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> I just updated to git v1.7.7 using the Ubuntu Lucid PPA and I found that
> `git check-attr` is broken now.
> 
> I have this attribute in my `$HOME/.gitattributes` file:
> 
>     /. show_in_prompt=no
> 
> Now, if I go to `$HOME` and run
> 
>     git check-attr show_in_prompt -- .
> 
> With git v1.7.6 this is the answer I got:
> 
>     .: show_in_prompt: no
> 
> With the newer v1.7.7 I get this, instead:
> 
>     .: show_in_prompt: unspecified
> 
> Also, if I use the `--all` option, `check-attr` does not show any
> attribute at all.
> 
> I see in the release notes of 1.7.7-rc1 that `check-attr` has been
> changed to allow relative paths to be specified. Maybe this error is
> related to that change.

Indeed, your use case is broken by

f5114a40c0d0276ce6ff215a3dc51eb19da5b420

In fact the support for gitattributes using patterns involving "." was pretty spotty in v1.7.6 too. For example,

------------------------------------------- echo ". foo" >./.gitattributes git check-attr foo -- . ./ ./. x x/ ./x x/. .: foo: set ./: foo: unspecified WRONG ./.: foo: set x: foo: unspecified WRONG? x/: foo: unspecified WRONG? ./x: foo: unspecified WRONG? x/.: foo: set RIGHT?

------------------------------------------- echo "/. foo" >./.gitattributes git check-attr foo -- . ./ ./. x x/ ./x x/. .: foo: set ./: foo: unspecified WRONG ./.: foo: set x: foo: unspecified x/: foo: unspecified ./x: foo: unspecified x/.: foo: unspecified

------------------------------------------- echo ". foo" >x/.gitattributes git check-attr foo -- . ./ ./. x x/ ./x x/. .: foo: unspecified ./: foo: unspecified ./.: foo: unspecified x: foo: unspecified WRONG? x/: foo: unspecified WRONG? ./x: foo: unspecified WRONG? x/.: foo: set RIGHT?

------------------------------------------- echo "/. foo" >x/.gitattributes git check-attr foo -- . ./ ./. x x/ ./x x/. .: foo: unspecified ./: foo: unspecified ./.: foo: unspecified x: foo: unspecified WRONG x/: foo: unspecified WRONG ./x: foo: unspecified WRONG x/.: foo: set

-------------------------------------------

I conclude that this functionality was never really defined correctly, and you were pretty lucky that your case worked at all :-)

It's not to hard to fix your particular use case. But for a real fix, we would need to decide what is the correct behavior in all of the lines above marked "?"; specifically, should "." match every subdirectory under a given directory, does it match only the directory containing the .gitattributes file, or is this construct illegal?

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger@alum.mit.edu
http://softwareswirl.blogspot.com/