Re: refining .gitignores

From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Date: Nov 15, 2007, 20:40 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.LFD.0.9999.0711151237550.4260@woody.linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <80ejerdzjd.fsf@tiny.isode.net>

On Thu, 15 Nov 2007, Bruce Stephens wrote:

>
> They are in the index.  What I want is a list of files which are known
> to git, which are matched by the default rules (in particular the
> .gitignore files).

Ahh.

*All* the .gitignore rules are purely about files that git does not already know about. Once git tracks a pathname, the ignore rules simply do not matter.

Files that are in the index are simply never ignored. There's no way to ignore them, and in fact, the whole "git add -f" thing is a way to add files to the index and override the exclude rules - at which point git then tracks them regardless of any such exclude rules.

			Linus