From: Johannes Sixt <j6t@xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 5 Apr 2011 23:15:54 +0200
Trying to whitelist a single file pattern in a directory that I was
otherwise content to ignore, if I try
/m4/
!/m4/virt-*.m4
then 'git add' will keep warning me that I have to use -f. That is
because ignoring a directory is much different than ignoring all files
in a directory, when it comes to later negation patterns:
/m4/*
!/m4/virt-*.m4
However, this example is misleading because it gives the false
impression that you could do
/foo/*
!/foo/bar/baz
and have foo/bar/baz not ignored, and it is still ignored. Add a
paragraph in the NOTES section explaining the general rule and
suggesting ignoring the directory and using "git add -f" to track
exceptions to cope with it.
[jn: change description distilled from messages by Eric and Hannes
to the mailing list.
As Eric noticed, while the "git add -f" trick works well with
commands like "git status" and "git add -u", plain "git add
subdir/<path>" refuses to update the index with changes from an
ignored subdirectory. When describing the trick, explicitly list a
few commands that already behave appropriately to avoid confusion.]
Reported-by: Eric Blake <eblake@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx>
---
That's the end of the series. Thoughts?
Documentation/gitignore.txt | 15 +++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index e5715a27..8b6f601e 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -113,6 +113,21 @@ use 'git update-index {litdd}assume-unchanged'.
To stop tracking a file that is currently tracked, use
'git rm --cached'.
+When a directory is ignored, it is not possible to un-ignore a single file
+somewhere in the directory using another pattern. E.g., with the patterns
+
+--------------
+/build/
+!/build/tests/results
+--------------
+
+the file "build/tests/results" is still ignored because when a directory is
+ignored, its contents are never investigated. In a situation where a few
+exceptions in an otherwise ignored hierarchy are needed, the recommended
+procedure is to specify to ignore the root of the hierarchy and then to 'git
+add -f' the exceptional files. Subsequent changes to the files will not be
+ignored by 'git status', 'git add .', 'git add -u', or 'git commit -a'.
+
EXAMPLES
--------
--
1.7.8.rc0
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