From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2012 18:48:54 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 04/10] attr: more matching optimizations from .gitignore
Message-ID: <7vy5jku549.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1349412069-627-5-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

> +Unlike `.gitignore`, negative patterns are not supported.
> +Patterns that match directories are also not supported.

Is "are not supported" the right phrasing?

I think it makes perfect sense not to forbid "!path attr1", because
it is unclear what it means (e.g. "path -attr1" vs "path !attr1").
So I would say "Negative patterns are forbidden as they do not make
any sense".

But for the latter, I think it makes a lot more sense to just accept
"path/ attr1" and doing nothing.  The user requests to set an
attribute to "path" that has to be a directory, and there is nothing
wrong in such a request in itself.  But nothing in git asks for
attributes for directories (because we do not track directories),
and such a request happens to be a no-op.