Am 19.11.21 um 15:51 schrieb Derrick Stolee: > What is unclear to me is what exactly "match a directory" means. > If we ignore a directory, then we ignore everything inside it (until > another pattern says we should care about it), but the converse > should also hold: if we have a pattern like "!data/**/", then that > should mean "include everything inside data/<A>/ where <A> is any > directory name". > > My inability to form a mental model where the existing behavior > matches the documented specification is an indicator that this was > changed erroneously. A revert patch is included at the end of this > message. > > If anyone could help clarify my understanding here, then maybe > there is room for improving the documentation. You form a wrong mental model when you start with the grand picture of a working tree. That is, when you say - here I have theeeeeese many files and directories, - and I want to ignore some: foo/**/, - but I don't want to ignore others: !bar/**/. This forms the wrong mental model because that is not how Git sees the working tree: it never has a grand picture of all of its contents. Git only ever sees the contents of one directory. When Git determines that a sub-directory is ignored, then that one's contents are never inspected, and there is no opportunity to un-ignore some of the sub-directory's contents. -- Hannes
