gitignore documentation for info/exclude files and patterns with relative directories
3 messages between Mar 27, 2026 and Mar 28, 2026, from Dan Drake, Junio C Hamano, Shreyansh Paliwal.
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Hello,
In the "pattern format" section of the gitignore manpage, it says:
Show 7 quoted lines
> The slash "/" is used as the directory separator. Separators may occur at the
> beginning, middle or end of the .gitignore search pattern.
>
> If there is a separator at the beginning or middle (or both) of the pattern,
> then the pattern is relative to the directory level of the particular
> .gitignore file itself. Otherwise the pattern may also match at any
> level below the .gitignore level.
For a .git/info/exclude file, the above makes it sound like the pattern will be relative to that .git/info directory, so that you would need to use this kind of p attern to match files starting with 'foo' in the root of the repo:
../../foo*
However, it seems that for patterns in the info/exclude file, the beginning slash anchors the pattern to the root of the repo; the above pattern in that file should be '/foo*'.
The documentation should mention this behavior for info/exclude, as well as the core.excludesFile.
Dan
-- Ceci n'est pas une .signature.
Re: gitignore documentation for info/exclude files and patterns with relative directories
Dan Drake <dan@dandrake.org> writes:
> The documentation should mention this behavior for info/exclude, as well as
> the core.excludesFile.
Yup, my mistake more than 20-year-old that nobody complained so far ;-)
Yes, these exclude pattern sources that are outside the working tree behave as if they are specified at the root level of the working tree.
Patches welcome. Thanks.
[PATCH] doc: gitignore: clarify pattern base for info/exclude and core.excludesFile
The pattern format section describes how patterns are interpreted relative to the location of a .gitignore file, but does not mention the behavior for exclude sources outside the working tree.
Clarify that patterns from $GIT_DIR/info/exclude and core.excludesFile are treated as if they are specified at the root of the working tree, so a leading '/' anchors matches at the repository root.
Reported-by: Dan Drake <dan@dandrake.org>
Signed-off-by: Shreyansh Paliwal <shreyanshpaliwalcmsmn@gmail.com>
---
Documentation/gitignore.adoc | 5 +++++
1 file changed, 5 insertions(+)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.adoc b/Documentation/gitignore.adoc
index 9fccab4ae8..a3d24e5c34 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.adoc
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.adoc
@@ -96,6 +96,11 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
particular `.gitignore` file itself. Otherwise the pattern may also
match at any level below the `.gitignore` level.
+ - Patterns read from exclude sources that are outside the working tree,
+ such as $GIT_DIR/info/exclude and core.excludesFile, are treated as if
+ they are specified at the root of the working tree, i.e. a leading "/"
+ in such patterns anchors the match at the root of the repository.
+
- If there is a separator at the end of the pattern then the pattern
will only match directories, otherwise the pattern can match both
files and directories.
--
2.53.0