threads / discuss / 35490

gitignore excludes not working?

Subject: gitignore excludes not working?

## tl;dr

3 messages between Dec 6, 2013 and Dec 7, 2013.

replies: 2people: 3as markdown or json

Martin Langhoff· Dec 6, 2013, 17:26 UTC · lore

Tested with git 1.7.12.4 (Apple Git-37) and git 1.8.3.1 on F20.

$ mkdir foo $ cd foo $ git init Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/foo/.git/ $ mkdir -p modules/boring $ mkdir -p modules/interesting $ touch modules/boring/lib.c $ touch modules/interesting/other.c $ touch modules/interesting/lib.c $ git add modules/interesting/lib.c $ git status # On branch master # # Initial commit # # Changes to be committed: # (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage) # # new file: modules/interesting/lib.c # # Untracked files: # (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) # # modules/boring/ # modules/interesting/other.c

$ echo '/modules/' > .gitignore $ echo '!/modules/interesting/' >> .gitignore

On this git status, I would expect to see modules/interesting/other.c listed as untracked, however:

$ git status # On branch master # # Initial commit # # Changes to be committed: # (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage) # # new file: modules/interesting/lib.c # # Untracked files: # (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed) # # .gitignore

thoughts?

-- 
 martin.langhoff@gmail.com
 -  ask interesting questions
 - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
 ~ http://docs.moodle.org/en/User:Martin_Langhoff

Jiang Xin· Dec 7, 2013, 01:07 UTC · re: Martin Langhoff · lore

Re: gitignore excludes not working?

2013/12/7 Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>:

Show 31 quoted lines

> Tested with git 1.7.12.4 (Apple Git-37) and git 1.8.3.1 on F20.
>
> $ mkdir foo
> $ cd foo
> $ git init
> Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/foo/.git/
> $ mkdir -p modules/boring
> $ mkdir -p modules/interesting
> $ touch modules/boring/lib.c
> $ touch modules/interesting/other.c
> $ touch modules/interesting/lib.c
> $ git add modules/interesting/lib.c
> $ git status
> # On branch master
> #
> # Initial commit
> #
> # Changes to be committed:
> #   (use "git rm --cached <file>..." to unstage)
> #
> # new file:   modules/interesting/lib.c
> #
> # Untracked files:
> #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
> #
> # modules/boring/
> # modules/interesting/other.c
>
> $ echo '/modules/' > .gitignore
> $ echo '!/modules/interesting/' >> .gitignore
>

I happened to write a software "Gistore" to backup arbitrary files and directories using Git, and it will save interesting things in .git/info/exclude. For your case, you could write .gitignore as:

    /modules/*
    !/modules/interesting
    !/modules/interesting/**

You can find my code in Gistore to generate proper .gitignore here:

    https://github.com/jiangxin/gistore/blob/master/lib/gistore/repo.rb#L228

Because I will ignore all files except what I want, the ignore file would be:

   *
    !/modules
    !/modules/interesting
    !/modules/interesting/**

-- 
Jiang Xin

Duy Nguyen· Dec 7, 2013, 03:20 UTC · re: Martin Langhoff · lore

Re: gitignore excludes not working?

On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 12:26 AM, Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> # Untracked files:
> #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
> #
> # modules/boring/
> # modules/interesting/other.c
>
> $ echo '/modules/' > .gitignore
> $ echo '!/modules/interesting/' >> .gitignore

Once you ignore the directory "modules", it won't bother with anything inside. As a result, !/modules/interesting/ is ignored. Turning the first rule to /modules/* like Jiang Xin showed does the trick because git is told to ignore entries inside 'modules', not 'modules' itself.

I think the best we could do is turning /modules/ into /modules/* internally. But it only works for simple cases like yours. If you write /mo*ules/, I don't think we can make git smart enough to correlate /mo*ules/ to !/modules/interesting/. So the second best thing is improve documents about this case, which is what kb/doc-exclude-directory-semantics does (currently on 'next').

-- 
Duy