Re: Lack of system-level excludesFile

On 2024-10-03 at 00:23:17, Sparr wrote:

I wasn't part of the project when the exclude functionality was implemented, so I can't say what the intent was, but I will note that even CVS had ignore files. My guess is that it wasn't seen as something useful to implement, so nobody implemented it, but I think your argument for doing so isn't bad.

I'll just note that typically I ignore things in the global include which are likely to affect the environment I use, including my editor and operating system. So when I was tutoring an Emacs user, we configured his machine to ignore `*~`, since his editor creates backup files, and likewise, if I were still using macOS, I'd ignore `.DS_Store`.

So basically, I think such a feature could be useful, but I also don't see it as immediately necessary because the global (per-user) file is also generally useful for this if the user is aware enough to know it exists (which I admit they might not be). One thing I would request is that if you add this, you add an appropriate var to `git var` so that people can find the location, which is important because different versions of Git (say, Apple's vs. Homebrew's) may install the system configuration in different locations.