Re: /* in .gitignore

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 25, 2012, 23:13 UTC
Message-ID: <7vobktvgq8.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAE1pOi1vEGVcg5wn9VjkSVmMO_hparmYP0hn86XwpSpMmB=Peg@mail.gmail.com>

Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com> writes:

> Naturally, this behaviour makes perfect sense: "/*" means everything.
> Still, I was wondering whether it might be a good idea to make an
> exception for '.gitignore' itself? Then if somebody *really* wanted to
> ignore '.gitignore' they could add "/.gitignore" to '.gitignore'?

If somebody is sick enough to ignore "everything", he can add "/*" to the .gitignore file and in order to make sure he knows what he is doing and he is doing what he thinks is doing, he would check with "git diff --stat HEAD" etc. before committing, and double check with "git show --stat" etc. after committing.

".gitignore" (or ".gitattributes" for that matter) shouldn't be any different from your ordinary tracked contents. If you have "*.o" in the ignored pattern list, you would need an extra care to defeat the pattern to add vendor-supplied binary-only object file with "add -f" and live with the fact that a new vendor-supplied binary-only object file not appearing on untracked list. It is exactly the same deal.

Having said that, I guess you could add "!.git*" to your $GIT_DIR/info/exclude and see if it gives an improved user experience.