Re: Git ignore help

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Mar 22, 2015, 03:33 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cRU38sNHRsn=8=60wPO_AoQt-zn1dicFHwjG0OK-9tecQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <47F.3lxhK.7IviRa5Gutr.1L2}X3@seznam.cz>

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 6:36 AM,  <mdconf@seznam.cz> wrote:

Show 26 quoted lines

> I am trying to setup my git ignore (resp. .git/info/exclude) so that I exclude
>  all directories and files except the content of directories that I
> specifically include (incl. anything within them recursively).
>
> I set the .git/info/exclude with the following content:
>
> ========
> # Exclude everything
> /*
> # Except the below that we include
> !/db/data/load/base/bootstraponly
> !/db/data/load/base/safetoload
> !/db/ddl
> !/labels
> !/reports/usrint
> !/scripts
> !/src/cmdsrc/usrint
> ========
>
> However it does not do what I anticipated. It indeed excludes everything but
> the include part does not work - it only works for !/labels and !/scripts
> directories (i.e. the first level directories). All other are still ignored -
> so when I create file /db/data/load/base/bootstraponly/somefile.txt git still
> ignores it...
>
> Any idea what I am doing wrong?

The fourth bullet point of the "Pattern Format" section of the gitignore man page has this to say, which explains the behavior you're seeing:

    An optional prefix "!" which negates the pattern; any matching
    file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again.
    It is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of
    that file is excluded. Git doesn’t list excluded directories for
    performance reasons, so any patterns on contained files have no
    effect, no matter where they are defined.