On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 3:56 PM David C Black <david.black@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sitting at the rood of my working directory I attempted to add a file to the git repository with:
> > git add extern/bin/build
>
> The repository had the following .gitignore file contents:
> > /extern/
> > !/extern/bin/
> > !/extern/ABOUT.md
>
> I received an error message:
> > The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
> > extern
> > hint: Use -f if you really want to add them.
>
> By negating entries in the /extern/bin/ directory, I did not expect an error
> message. Of course adding -f made it work, but I think it does not match the
> described behavior for this tool.
This appears to be working as documented. From the gitginore(5) man page:
An optional prefix "!" which negates the pattern; any matching
file excluded by a previous pattern will become included again. It
is not possible to re-include a file if a parent directory of that
file is excluded.
In your .gitignore file, /extern/ is ignored, which means that the
subsequent "!/extern/.../" lines are ineffectual. So, as far as Git is
concerned, /extern/bin/build is indeed ignored, thus its refusal
without --force.
