Re: How do I qualify paths in the .gitignore file w.r.t. the repo root directory?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 24, 2009, 07:06 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1vtomhz1.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <e38bce640902232247t63a37f63x9f403fbda0744cfd@mail.gmail.com>

Brent Goodrick <bgoodr@gmail.com> writes:

Show 24 quoted lines

> Say I have these files and directories [2]:
>
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/.gitignore
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/foo/
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/bar/
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/bar/baz/foo/
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/bar/baz/real/
>
> then I do:
>
>   cd /home/smart_tator/misc_files/; git init
>
> and say I have this line in that .gitignore file:
>
>   foo/
>
> And then I naively execute:
>
>   git add bar/
>
> then the bar/baz/real/ is added, but these are dutifully ignored:
>
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/foo/
>   /home/smart_tator/misc_files/bar/baz/foo/

I think you are looking for "/foo/".  From Documentation/gitignore.txt:

 - If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the
   purpose of the following description, but it would only find
   a match with a directory.  In other words, `foo/` will match a
   directory `foo` and paths underneath it, but will not match a
   regular file or a symbolic link `foo` (this is consistent
   with the way how pathspec works in general in git).

With this rule, (1) the trailing slash in your "foo/" tells git to match only with directories, but (2) it behaves as if you said "foo" for all the other rules.

With "/foo/", you tell git to match only with a directory, and it is as if you said "/foo".

 - If the pattern does not contain a slash '/', git treats it as
   a shell glob pattern and checks for a match against the
   pathname without leading directories.

Your "foo/" now behaves the same way as "foo" behaves. You are telling git to match directory foo anywhere in the tree. "/foo/" (now behaving the same way as "/foo") does not satisfy this criteria so we would skip this rule.

 - Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable
   for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag:
   wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname.
   For example, "Documentation/\*.html" matches
   "Documentation/git.html" but not
   "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html".  A leading slash matches the
   beginning of the pathname; for example, "/*.c" matches
   "cat-file.c" but not "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

Your "foo/" does not survive to this rule, but "/foo/" does. It now behaves as "/foo" and its leading slash makes it match the beginning.