Re: [PATCH] check-ignore: fix handling with negated patterns

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 17, 2020, 18:04 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqimk5ks39.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <pull.711.git.git.1581956106255.gitgitgadget@gmail.com>

"Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> From: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
>
> check-ignore was meant to check ignore rules the same way git status and
> other commands would, and to report whether a path is excluded.  It
> failed to do this (and generated a few bug reports), however, because it
> did not account for negated patterns.

I suspect that the above distorts history. IIRC, it was meant as a tool to see which exact pattern in the exclude sequence had the final say for the given needle, written primarily as a debugging aid. In that context, "This rule has the final say", whether the rule is a negative or positive, still means something.

It is just the behavior is _much_ less useful for those who want to know what the final say is, and I tend to agree that we probably are better off changing its output to reflect "so, are we ignoring the path after all? yes/no?" because we are pretty much done with debugging the exclude API implementation.