Re: GitAttributes feature export-ignore works, but -export-ignore (with dash) should also work

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 21, 2019, 13:29 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq5zjd8ij2.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20191121075837.GA30966@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> Now obviously there is recursion happening inside git-archive, as it
> walks the tree. And the current behavior is that it sees the ignored
> subtree and doesn't walk into it at all. So it _could_ make your
> original example work by actually searching within the tree for any
> paths marked -export-ignore, and including the directory if and only if
> it has unignored entries.
>
> I can't offhand think of anything that would break if we started doing
> that,...

If there is some effect we want to attach to a directory itself without affecting the paths inside it, the current and original design lets you express it naturally. If we make a pattern that match a directory to recurse, it is still possible to express it, but it is a bit cumbersome, e.g.

	/directory	want-to-affect-this
	/directory/**	-want-to-affect-this

I would think.

Git generally does *not* track directories, so in a sense it is arguable if it even makes sense to think about attaching an attribute to a directory itself (as opposed to a non-directory inside the directory) in the first place, though.