# Issues with git config blame. ignorerevsfile when file not found

1 messages from 2022-04-27 to 2022-04-27. Participants: Maxime Fontaine Bombardier.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/57808

## Maxime Fontaine Bombardier, 2022-04-27 20:03

Subject: Issues with git config blame. ignorerevsfile when file not found
Message-ID: <CAHh029azN65vyscsCmwCG5sFPO_sGPVJ6twBXwMdNXxfYT0X4w@mail.gmail.com>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/CAHh029azN65vyscsCmwCG5sFPO_sGPVJ6twBXwMdNXxfYT0X4w%40mail.gmail.com

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Hi,
I was looking to reformat full source code and ignore blame on this
commit. I was following this article :
https://michaelheap.com/git-ignore-rev/
Using this config command :
`git config --global blame.ignoreRevsFile .git-blame-ignore-revs`
I'm able to see git blame without seeing the formatting commit.
BUT when the file is not found on the repo, git blame is broken with
this error message:
could not open object name list: .git-blame-ignore-revs

On one hand, you don't want to manually write the ignore file every
time you want to use `git blame --ignore-rev <sha1>`, but on the other
hand, git blame is broken on every other repo that does not include
this file... I also use git lens pair with vscode to see blames and
the extension is broken if the file does not exist too.

Here are 2 ideas on how I would fix this issue:
- New config "blame.ignoreNotFound" boolean.
  - False by default.
    - Will still see the error when the file is not found.
  - True
    - Will ignore errors about the file not found and remove the
--ignore-rev feature in the current git blame command.
    - I would put this setting to true as default, because I don't
care about error messages. All I care is that git blame shows me the
real author and not the one who launched the formatter, BUT to not
break default behavior, this should be an optional setting.
- New file standard! (which I think is a better option)
  - Beside .gitignore, you can find the file .gitignorerevs (or any
better name). If the file is found in the repo, doing git blame will
use the file by default.
  - That way :
    - It's not a global config that does not apply to specific repo or
break the command when it's not found.
    - It's not a manual argument you need to add each time the command is used.
    - Nor a local config that everyone contributing to this repo needs
to set up to use git blame correctly.
  - And :
    - Any git hosting website like Github/Gitlab/etc. could also use
the file to help dev search for specific changes on the website.
  - IMO: I don't think having a file that ignores some commits will
hurt people's workflow as this is a deliberate change. You know that
this commit is bad for the code history, so you want to ignore those
changes to clean up the history.

Well I hope I gave enough description to make this change happen :)
Btw, I'm writing today because I definitely think this is a MUST
feature to make git blame truly shine and because I searched online
and I couldn't find any proper solution, just that you can't do that
yet.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70435937/git-blame-with-optional-ignorerevsfile

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