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From: Dakota Hawkins <dakota@dakotahawkins.com>
To: Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>
Cc: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Git <git@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: .gitattributes override behavior (possible bug, or documentation bug)
Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2018 23:22:02 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAHnyXxRsqR3A0FpHJwnfOWo29WNx05qWSXfxvmwPv1TUdqm0aQ@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8BP+ov0jeHp6QZoi=etPDQX5qEFqEfktyA-U-ffUE92vA@mail.gmail.com>

Thinking about this a little more, I'm now attracted to the idea that
its .gitignore that's weird.

As I understand it, .gitignore stops recursion when there's a
directory match (`somedir/`) but also explicitly allows nested
.gitnore file _as well as_ exclusion (`!*.txt`).

So, in the following (contrived) example, the user doesn't get what they want:

    repo/
    |- .git/
    |- .gitignore               # /ignore-most/
    |- ignore-most/
    |  |- .gitignore            # !*.txt
    |  |- please_ignore.png
    |  |- dont_ignore_me.txt

`repo/ignore-most/dont_ignore_me.txt` is still ignored, despite what
seems like the obvious intention of the user.

Maybe a unified "best-practices" would first-and-foremost recommend
against matching directories at all (makes sense, git doesn't manage
directories). In the above example, changing `/ignore-most/` to
`/ignore-most/*` has the "desired" effect.

What do you think?

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 12:28 PM, Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 5:40 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 12:25:27AM -0400, Dakota Hawkins wrote:
>>
>>> > Right. The technical reason is mostly "that is not how it was designed,
>>> > and it would possibly break some corner cases if we switched it now".
>>>
>>> I'm just spitballing here, but do you guys think there's any subset of
>>> the combined .gitignore and .gitattributes matching functionality that
>>> could at least serve as a good "best-practices, going forward"
>>> (because of consistency) for both? I will say every time I do this for
>>> a new repo and have to do something even slightly complicated or
>>> different from what I've done before with .gitattributes/.gitignore
>>> that it takes me a long-ish time to figure it out. It's like I'm
>>> vaguely aware of pitfalls I've encountered in the past in certain
>>> areas but don't remember exactly what they are, so I consult the docs,
>>> which are (in sum) confusing and lead to more time spent
>>> trying/failing/trying/works/fails-later/etc.
>>>
>>> One "this subset of rules will work for both this way" would be
>
> You know, you (Dakota) could implement the new "exclude" attribute in
> .gitattributes and ignore .gitignore files completely. That makes it
> works "for both" ;-) The effort is probably not small though.
>
>>> awesome even if the matching capabilities are technically divergent,
>>> but on the other hand that might paint both into a corner in terms of
>>> functionality.
>>
>> As far as I know, they should be the same with the exception of this
>> recursion, and the negative-pattern thing. But I'm cc-ing Duy, who is
>> the resident expert on ignore and attributes matching (whether he wants
>> to be or not ;) ).
>
> Ha ha ha.
>
>> I wouldn't be surprised if there's something I don't know about.
>
> The only thing from the top of my head is what made me fail to unify
> the implementation of the two. It's basically different order of
> evaluation [1] when your patterns are spread out in multiple files. I
> think it makes gitattr and gitignore behavior different too (but I
> didn't try to verify).
>
> Apart from that, the two should behave the same way besides the
> exceptions you pointed out.
>
> [1] https://public-inbox.org/git/%3CCACsJy8B8kYU7bkD8SiK354z4u=sY3hHbe4JVwNT_1pxod1cqUw@mail.gmail.com%3E/
>
>> So I think the "recommended subset" is basically "everything but these
>> few constructs". We just need to document them. ;)
>>
>> I probably should cc'd Duy on the documentation patch, too:
>>
>>   https://public-inbox.org/git/20180320041454.GA15213@sigill.intra.peff.net/
>>
>> -Peff
> --
> Duy

  reply	other threads:[~2018-03-21  3:22 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 28+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2018-03-20  1:49 .gitattributes override behavior (possible bug, or documentation bug) Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20  2:34 ` Jeff King
2018-03-20  3:10   ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20  3:17     ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20  4:12       ` Jeff King
2018-03-20  4:04     ` Jeff King
2018-03-20  4:14       ` [PATCH] doc/gitattributes: mention non-recursive behavior Jeff King
2018-03-20  4:28         ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20 16:41         ` Duy Nguyen
2018-03-21  6:50           ` Jeff King
2018-03-21 16:16             ` Duy Nguyen
2018-03-23  9:12               ` Jeff King
2018-03-20  4:25       ` .gitattributes override behavior (possible bug, or documentation bug) Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20  4:40         ` Jeff King
2018-03-20  4:49           ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20 16:28           ` Duy Nguyen
2018-03-21  3:22             ` Dakota Hawkins [this message]
2018-03-21  6:52               ` Jeff King
2018-03-21  7:36                 ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-21  7:44                   ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-21  7:50                   ` Jeff King
2018-03-21  8:35                     ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-21  8:36                       ` Jeff King
2018-03-21 16:18                   ` Junio C Hamano
2018-03-21 16:07               ` Duy Nguyen
2018-03-20  3:33   ` Junio C Hamano
2018-03-20  3:40     ` Dakota Hawkins
2018-03-20  3:45     ` Jeff King

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