Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > ... It does not make sense to allow where you are > to affect behaviour of the command, i.e. in these two invocations of > ls-files: > > git ls-files -X /var/tmp/exclude -i > cd example && git ls-files -X /var/tmp/exclude -i > > if the same line in /var/tmp/exclude meant completely different > things, it would be crazy. To put it another way, think of --exclude-from as a way to specify a replacement for .git/info/excludes, and --exclude-per-directory as a way to specify a replacement for the in-tree .gitignore files. Historically, we did not have the --exclude-standard option from the beginning, and only after we gained experience with --exclude-from and --exclude-per-directory in our scripts, the --exclude-standard was added to codify the (then-) best-current-practice after the fact, and we used --exclude-from for exactly that purpose before then. cf. 8e7b07c8 (git-ls-files: add --exclude-standard, 2007-11-15) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html