From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Wed, 16 Nov 2005 19:01:50 GMT
Subject: Re: Cogito and --exclude vs --exclude-per-directory
Message-ID: <7vd5l08li9.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <20051116093630.GA2783@diana.vm.bytemark.co.uk>

Karl Hasselström <kha@treskal.com> writes:

> [Note: this experiment was done with git 0.99.9g and Cogito 0.15.1, so ]
>
> It seems that --exclude patterns always take precedence over
> --exclude-per-directory patterns.
>
> Is this the intended behavior?

Yes, we had a lengthy discussion on this before ls-files
acquired the exclude patterns.

Documentation/git-ls-files.txt "Exclude Patterns" summarizes the
precedence rule, and it was done that way to allow command line
users to override what are in individual per-directory pattern
files per-invocation basis.  That is, --exclude-per-directory is
to store project defaults, and --exclude is for end-users to
specify override per-invocation.  --exclude-from has the lowest
precedence to give overall default.  The example in the
documetation has a a good illustration.

	* --exclude-from contains '*.[oa]' to catch generic
          "uninteresting" files.

	* --exclude-per-directory files contain patterns to
          catch files that are built by the Makefile in the
          directory.

        * --exclude specifies whatever the user feels like for
          the particular invocation.

If I were writing a Porcelain, I would probably install default
exclude list in /usr/lib/MyPorcelain/exclude file and point at
the file with --exclude-from.  I may also be tempted to check
$HOME/.MyPorcelain/exclude file and add it to give defaults per
user, but I do not do Porcelains, so...