How do I stop git enumerating my working directory

Hi,

I'm a recent convert to git. I've been swapping over my projects from cvs to git. The latest candidate for conversion is the config files for my Linux server. I've been using cvs to record all the config changes, and - mostly-automatically - to setup new servers. Git will do a far better job, I think, but I think I'm going to run into a problem: the root directory of the server will be the working directory. Only relatively few files will be under version control. How do I stop git enumerating the whole drive whenever I do things like git-diff?

I don't think I can make .gitignore files do the job, because it seems that you can set up to ignore a whole directory, and then partially countermand that by placing a .gitignore file (containing ! commands) inside the directory. That makes me think that ignoring doesn't prevent the enumeration.

Any help most appreciated. I really want to use git for this.

Cheers,
	Paul.

Paul Gardiner <lists@glidos.net> writes:

To me, it seems the opposite ;-).

I just tried to "git init" my $HOME, then "git status" takes forever, but "echo '*' > .gitignore; git status" completes immediately.

So, an option is to put "*" in your .gitignore, and then "git add -f" files explicitely, or to work your .gitignore finer.

Matthieu Moy wrote:

Ok, I was confusing myself because of having added files inside subdirectories of the ignored directory. I'm glad it works the way it does. Makes much more sense than what I'd thought it was doing.

P.

On Jul 1, 2008, at 11:57 AM, Paul Gardiner wrote:

That's where you're wrong. You can't get git to pay attention to anything inside an ignored directory using the .gitignore files. Once you ignore a directory, git stops looking at it completely. You can force git to look at a file inside an ignored directory by adding it directly, though. Git will pay attention to files you add for changes, but won't pay any attention to other files around it.

See the log below for what I mean:

$ mkdir temp
$ cd temp
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/brian/dev/temp/.git/
$ cat > .gitignore
ignoredir/
$ mkdir ignoredir
$ touch A
$ touch ignoredir/B
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       .gitignore
#       A
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to  
track)
$ cat > ignoredir/.gitignore
!B
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       .gitignore
#       A
nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to  
track)
$ git add ignoredir/B
$ git status
# On branch master
#
# Initial commit
#
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
#
#       new file: ignoredir/B
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       .gitignore
#       A
$ git commit -m "A"
Created initial commit 36ade7a: A
  0 files changed, 0 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
  create mode 100644 ignoredir/B
$ echo new > ignoredir/B
$ git status
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#
#       modified:   ignoredir/B
#
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       .gitignore
#       A
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

Glenn Griffin wrote:

Brilliant! I've now tried it and it does just as you say. I don't need git-status so it's just fine. Thanks for the advice.

P.