I was trying to whitelist a single file pattern in a directory
that I was otherwise content to ignore, but when I tried:
/m4/
!/m4/virt-*.m4
then 'git add' kept warning me that I had to use -f. I finally
figured out that ignoring a directory is much different than ignoring
all files in a directory, when it comes to later negation patterns:
/m4/*
!/m4/virt-*.m4
Improving the documentation will help others learn from my mistake.
Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@xxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx>
CC: Johannes Sixt <j6t@xxxxxxxx>
---
v2: incorporate helpful comments from Junio
Documentation/gitignore.txt | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++----
1 files changed, 21 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index 2e7328b..0955931 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -70,7 +70,11 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
- An optional prefix '!' which negates the pattern; any
matching file excluded by a previous pattern will become
included again. If a negated pattern matches, this will
- override lower precedence patterns sources.
+ override lower precedence patterns sources. However, since
+ directory patterns prevent searching for any files below
+ that directory, if it is desirable to whitelist a single
+ file in a directory, you should first exclude all files in
+ the directory rather than the directory itself.
- If the pattern ends with a slash, it is removed for the
purpose of the following description, but it would only find
@@ -87,7 +91,8 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
- Otherwise, git treats the pattern as a shell glob suitable
for consumption by fnmatch(3) with the FNM_PATHNAME flag:
- wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname.
+ wildcards in the pattern will not match a / in the pathname,
+ and do not ignore files with a leading . in the pathname.
For example, "Documentation/{asterisk}.html" matches
"Documentation/git.html" but not "Documentation/ppc/ppc.html"
or "tools/perf/Documentation/perf.html".
@@ -116,8 +121,11 @@ EXAMPLES
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
+ # Documentation/build
# Documentation/foo.html
# Documentation/gitignore.html
+ # build/log
+ # build/.file
# file.o
# lib.a
# src/internal.o
@@ -125,19 +133,28 @@ EXAMPLES
$ cat .git/info/exclude
# ignore objects and archives, anywhere in the tree.
*.[oa]
+ # ignore files in the immediate child directory build,...
+ /build/*
+ # ... except for the log.
+ !/build/log
$ cat Documentation/.gitignore
- # ignore generated html files,
+ # ignore generated html files,...
*.html
- # except foo.html which is maintained by hand
+ # ... except foo.html which is maintained by hand
!foo.html
$ git status
[...]
# Untracked files:
[...]
+ # Documentation/build
# Documentation/foo.html
+ # build/log
[...]
--------------------------------------------------------------
+Note that using `!/build/log' works with an earlier `/build/*' but
+would have no effect if there were an earlier `/build/'.
+
Another example:
--------------------------------------------------------------
--
1.7.4
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