Re: [BUG?] git-archive ignores remote .gitattributes

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Perhaps we would want two distinct modes in dir.c (gitignore stack) and attr.c (gitattributes stack). The current code implements the normal mode that uses the files from the work tree (so that you can modify .gitigore and expect it to take effect immediately) and fall back to .index (as the general principle, low-level part of git pretends missing files are unmodified files when they can). The new mode, which would be appropriate for commands such as "archive", would be triggered by first declaring that the program is going to work on a single tree object, and will cause the gitignore and gitattributes to be read from that tree (and only that tree).

Even a longer term clean-up would be (and this is probably a good GSoC sized project):

 - Unify gitignore and gitattributes stacks;

 - Maintain two or more gitignore/gitattributes stacks in effect at the
   same time.  Things like "git diff-tree $tree1 $tree2", "git diff-index
   --cached $tree", "git diff-index $tree", and "git archive $tree" should
   take attr/ignore from their respective places.