# .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * 5 messages from 2010-09-25 to 2010-09-25. Participants: Seth Robertson, Johannes Sixt, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, Sverre Rabbelier. Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/25244 ## Seth Robertson, 2010-09-25 19:23 Subject: .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * Message-ID: <201009251923.o8PJNJYE031841@no.baka.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/201009251923.o8PJNJYE031841%40no.baka.org ``` I'm not sure if this is a documentation bug, an actual bug, or my mis-interpretation of what is supposed to happen, however, this behavior was not expected by other people as well. This was tested using git 1.7.2.3 and 1.7.3 My sample configuration: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- mkdir foo; cd foo; git init; echo A > A; mkdir B; echo B > B/B git add .; git commit -a -m "initial" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- # Properly shows X and B/XX as untracked, as I expected echo X > X; echo XX > B/XX; git status # I expected B/XX to show up as untracked rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore echo '*' > .gitignore; echo '!*' > B/.gitignore; git status # I expected B/XX to show up as untracked rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore echo '/*' > .gitignore; git status # Works as I expected rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore echo '/*X' > .gitignore; git status # Works as I expected rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore echo '*X' > .gitignore; echo '!*X' > B/.gitignore; git status # Works as I expected rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore echo -e '/*\n!/B' > .gitignore; git status -Seth Robertson ``` ## Johannes Sixt, 2010-09-25 20:03 Subject: Re: .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * Message-ID: <201009252203.48820.j6t@kdbg.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/201009252203.48820.j6t%40kdbg.org In-Reply-To: <201009251923.o8PJNJYE031841@no.baka.org> ``` On Samstag, 25. September 2010, Seth Robertson wrote: > # Properly shows X and B/XX as untracked, as I expected > echo X > X; echo XX > B/XX; git status > > # I expected B/XX to show up as untracked > rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore > echo '*' > .gitignore; echo '!*' > B/.gitignore; git status You should update your expectations to match what you got. ;-) To show why your expectations are wrong, consider a *huge* and *deep* directory with thousands and thousands of subdirectories, call it "usr", that should be ignored. The .gitignore at the top-level would just say: /usr Do you really expect git to walk down this ignored directory, just to make double-sure that really, really down there does nowhere exist a .gitignore that says "oh, wait, don't ignore *this* file"? -- Hannes ``` ## Seth Robertson, 2010-09-25 20:40 Subject: [PATCH] Re: .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * Message-ID: <201009252040.o8PKedbo004741@no.baka.org> URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/201009252040.o8PKedbo004741%40no.baka.org In-Reply-To: <201009252203.48820.j6t@kdbg.org> ``` In message <201009252203.48820.j6t@kdbg.org>, Johannes Sixt writes: On Samstag, 25. September 2010, Seth Robertson wrote: > # Properly shows X and B/XX as untracked, as I expected > echo X > X; echo XX > B/XX; git status > > # I expected B/XX to show up as untracked > rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore > echo '*' > .gitignore; echo '!*' > B/.gitignore; git status You should update your expectations to match what you got. ;-) To show why your expectations are wrong, consider a *huge* and *deep* directory with thousands and thousands of subdirectories, call it "usr", that should be ignored. The .gitignore at the top-level would just say: /usr Do you really expect git to walk down this ignored directory, just to make double-sure that really, really down there does nowhere exist a .gitignore that says "oh, wait, don't ignore *this* file"? Hmm. No, not really, but having a .gitignore in a directory which has tracked git files in it seems somehow different, and at least to me the documentation of .gitignore suggests a different algorithm. How about this for a documentation patch? Signed-off-by: Seth Robertson ---------------------------------------------------------------------- diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt index 7dc2e8b..4f825d8 100644 --- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt +++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt @@ -33,6 +33,8 @@ precedence, the last matching pattern decides the outcome): as the path, or in any parent directory, with patterns in the higher level files (up to the toplevel of the work tree) being overridden by those in lower level files down to the directory containing the file. + Any pattern causing a directory to be ignored will cause + any `.gitignore` file under that dirctory to be ignored. These patterns match relative to the location of the `.gitignore` file. A project normally includes such `.gitignore` files in its repository, containing patterns for ``` ## Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason, 2010-09-25 20:53 Subject: Re: .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/AANLkTinF2Bk0O96hPiB%2BWFzWAwEqu%3DwqdXEnM39%2BJOoN%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <201009252203.48820.j6t@kdbg.org> ``` On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 20:03, Johannes Sixt wrote: > On Samstag, 25. September 2010, Seth Robertson wrote: >> # Properly shows X and B/XX as untracked, as I expected >> echo X > X; echo XX > B/XX; git status >> >> # I expected B/XX to show up as untracked >> rm -f .gitignore B/.gitignore >> echo '*' > .gitignore; echo '!*' > B/.gitignore; git status > > You should update your expectations to match what you got. ;-) > > To show why your expectations are wrong, consider a *huge* and *deep* > directory with thousands and thousands of subdirectories, call it "usr", that > should be ignored. The .gitignore at the top-level would just say: > >  /usr > > Do you really expect git to walk down this ignored directory, just to make > double-sure that really, really down there does nowhere exist a .gitignore > that says "oh, wait, don't ignore *this* file"? That wouldn't be so expensive if the expectation that the .gitignore in /usr would only be considered if it had already been commited. Then we'd just have to check if we have a tree for /usr, and whether there's a gitignore there. But doing this in the top-level .gitignore if possible is the best solution. ``` ## Sverre Rabbelier, 2010-09-25 23:27 Subject: Re: .gitignore Bug Report on the behavior of * Message-ID: URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/AANLkTi%3DzkyTHyw-xakhdgDBNCPfkwEgPswvCVs31Sgqn%40mail.gmail.com In-Reply-To: <201009252203.48820.j6t@kdbg.org> ``` Heya, On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 22:03, Johannes Sixt wrote: > Do you really expect git to walk down this ignored directory, just to make > double-sure that really, really down there does nowhere exist a .gitignore > that says "oh, wait, don't ignore *this* file"? Yet when I (recursively for all files) 'git update-index --assume-unchanged some-dir' it will still looking at all the bloody .gitignore making it slow as moleasses. Of course, the above is an insane setup with a .gitignore file in each and every directory. But it would be so nice if git Just Worked even in insane cases! -- Cheers, Sverre Rabbelier ```