Re: [RFD] Ignore rules

JS> Is there value in:

JS> a. pushing the ignore logic into the core git tools such as git-ls-files

When there is an agreed upon Porcelain layer ignore logic, git-ls-files --others --exclude-from=... should be changed so that it uses the same file format and same semantics, and probably use the default ignore file without being explicitly told. Otherwise things would get quite confusing, so yes, I see value in there.

I do not however think this should apply to things like "git-update-cache --add"; because even though user may say "git-update-cache --add *" and wish it to ignore things on the ignore list, that is not how shell parameter expansion works.

I would like to see a git-path-helper command that can act as filter between "find -print0" and "xargs -0" like this:

    find * -print0 |
    git-path-helper -z --ignore-file=.git/info/ignore |
    xargs -r -0 git-update-cache --add --

I envision that we should not even need --ignore-file parameter, once we have "an agreed upon Porcelain layer ignore logic". It should read the "agreed upon" location, somewhere under the $GIT_DIR and perform the "agreed upon" filtering logic.

I further envision that this would work from anywhere in the work tree, not only from the directory that corresponds to the top of the tree structure GIT_INDEX_FILE describes. For example, in linux-2.6 git tree, you _ought_ to be able to say something like this:

    cd fs
    find ext? ../include/linux -type f -print0 |
    git-path-helper -z |
    xargs -r -0 git-update-cache --add --

The git-path-helper command could internally run getpwd() and find out the top directory (in this case, the parent directory of our current working directory "fs"), then canonicalize the incoming filenames (either relative to getpwd() or the full filesystem path) to paths relative to the top directory, apply the ignore filter and send the surviving paths downstream. Anything downstream driven with xargs -0 would get relative paths suitable for core GIT consumption.

JS> b. including the current ignore .* rule as a default ignore rule that JS> can be overridden by a .gitignore file

Knowing the number of places that assume .* are irrelevant, I would not be looking forward to doing that myself, but that behaviour would be ideal.