Re: .gitattributes override behavior (possible bug, or documentation bug)
- From
- Dakota Hawkins <dakota@dakotahawkins.com>
- Date
- Mar 21, 2018, 03:22 UTC
- Message-ID
- <CAHnyXxRsqR3A0FpHJwnfOWo29WNx05qWSXfxvmwPv1TUdqm0aQ@mail.gmail.com>
- In-Reply-To
- <CACsJy8BP+ov0jeHp6QZoi=etPDQX5qEFqEfktyA-U-ffUE92vA@mail.gmail.com>
Thinking about this a little more, I'm now attracted to the idea that its .gitignore that's weird.
As I understand it, .gitignore stops recursion when there's a directory match (`somedir/`) but also explicitly allows nested .gitnore file _as well as_ exclusion (`!*.txt`).
So, in the following (contrived) example, the user doesn't get what they want:
repo/
|- .git/
|- .gitignore # /ignore-most/
|- ignore-most/
| |- .gitignore # !*.txt
| |- please_ignore.png
| |- dont_ignore_me.txt`repo/ignore-most/dont_ignore_me.txt` is still ignored, despite what seems like the obvious intention of the user.
Maybe a unified "best-practices" would first-and-foremost recommend against matching directories at all (makes sense, git doesn't manage directories). In the above example, changing `/ignore-most/` to `/ignore-most/*` has the "desired" effect.
What do you think?
On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 12:28 PM, Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
Show 58 quoted lines
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 5:40 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote: >> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 12:25:27AM -0400, Dakota Hawkins wrote: >> >>> > Right. The technical reason is mostly "that is not how it was designed, >>> > and it would possibly break some corner cases if we switched it now". >>> >>> I'm just spitballing here, but do you guys think there's any subset of >>> the combined .gitignore and .gitattributes matching functionality that >>> could at least serve as a good "best-practices, going forward" >>> (because of consistency) for both? I will say every time I do this for >>> a new repo and have to do something even slightly complicated or >>> different from what I've done before with .gitattributes/.gitignore >>> that it takes me a long-ish time to figure it out. It's like I'm >>> vaguely aware of pitfalls I've encountered in the past in certain >>> areas but don't remember exactly what they are, so I consult the docs, >>> which are (in sum) confusing and lead to more time spent >>> trying/failing/trying/works/fails-later/etc. >>> >>> One "this subset of rules will work for both this way" would be > > You know, you (Dakota) could implement the new "exclude" attribute in > .gitattributes and ignore .gitignore files completely. That makes it > works "for both" ;-) The effort is probably not small though. > >>> awesome even if the matching capabilities are technically divergent, >>> but on the other hand that might paint both into a corner in terms of >>> functionality. >> >> As far as I know, they should be the same with the exception of this >> recursion, and the negative-pattern thing. But I'm cc-ing Duy, who is >> the resident expert on ignore and attributes matching (whether he wants >> to be or not ;) ). > > Ha ha ha. > >> I wouldn't be surprised if there's something I don't know about. > > The only thing from the top of my head is what made me fail to unify > the implementation of the two. It's basically different order of > evaluation [1] when your patterns are spread out in multiple files. I > think it makes gitattr and gitignore behavior different too (but I > didn't try to verify). > > Apart from that, the two should behave the same way besides the > exceptions you pointed out. > > [1] https://public-inbox.org/git/%3CCACsJy8B8kYU7bkD8SiK354z4u=sY3hHbe4JVwNT_1pxod1cqUw@mail.gmail.com%3E/ > >> So I think the "recommended subset" is basically "everything but these >> few constructs". We just need to document them. ;) >> >> I probably should cc'd Duy on the documentation patch, too: >> >> https://public-inbox.org/git/20180320041454.GA15213@sigill.intra.peff.net/ >> >> -Peff > -- > Duy