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.
CC: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx>
CC: Johannes Sixt <j6t@xxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Eric Blake <eblake@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
v3: split out fnmatch tweaks, don't tweak specification of patterns
or existing examples but instead add an entirely new example, make
the example use a deeper hierarchy
Documentation/gitignore.txt | 38 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 38 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index 9b1e5e1..e1ad234 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -139,6 +139,44 @@ EXAMPLES
[...]
--------------------------------------------------------------
+It is possible to ignore most of a hierarchy, while still
+white-listing a single file, by ignoring multiple files then using a
+negation pattern for the file in question. However, this requires
+ignoring files and not directories, since no patterns are ever matched
+inside of an ignored directory. For nested files, it requires several
+iterations of refined patterns.
+
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+ $ git status
+ [...]
+ # Untracked files:
+ [...]
+ # Documentation/build/file
+ # build/file
+ # build/foo/baz
+ # build/foo/other
+ [...]
+ $ cat .gitignore
+ # Use anchoring, since `build' would ignore Documentation/build.
+ # Do not ignore the directory itself, ...
+ # /build/
+ # rather ignore files in the top-level build directory, ...
+ /build/*
+ # but permit child directories, ...
+ !/build/*/
+ # then ignore all nested files, ...
+ /build/*/*
+ # and finally white-list the special file
+ !/build/foo/baz
+ $ git status
+ [...]
+ # Untracked files:
+ [...]
+ # Documentation/build/file
+ # build/foo/baz
+ [...]
+--------------------------------------------------------------
+
Another example:
--------------------------------------------------------------
--
1.7.4
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