From: Junio C Hamano Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2019 13:29:21 GMT Subject: Re: GitAttributes feature export-ignore works, but -export-ignore (with dash) should also work Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <20191121075837.GA30966@sigill.intra.peff.net> Jeff King writes: > 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.