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.gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

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Re: .gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

#31

Post by latexr »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #4

Yes, the time I used to hook up "rm `find ./ | grep DS_Store`" before anyone do a `git add`

That command doesn’t feel safe. It’ll delete anything with `DS_Store` in the name (even if it has other text). Does that even work properly? You’re relying on newlines to separate the files. I can imagine a different IFS easily screwing that up. In the end, you’re invoking three different utilities to do a janky operation which can be done properly with a single one:

  find . -name '.DS_Store' -delete

Re: .gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

#32

Post by plorkyeran »

arcfour wrote: post #7

I have never once experienced this problem. Mostly because I don't work with people who blindly commit everything without even looking once to see what's in their commit.

Interns and new hires sometimes need a quick chat about actually looking at their changes before asking for a review, but that's about it in my experience. I guess it could be a problem for a project which accepts a large number of public PRs from mostly non-technical or beginner users?

Re: .gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

#36

Post by cstrahan »

yencabulator wrote: post #13

This is a bad idea and if this seems necessary you are interacting with very low quality committers. People who don't even bother reading their own commits do not deserve to get their commits merged. Also, that gitignore doesn't even work. man gitignore: • 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 f…

> Also, that gitignore doesn't even work.

It's not terribly far off. This works:

  diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore.new
  index 7dc7aea..fc9ebfe 100644
  --- a/.gitignore
  +++ b/.gitignore.new
  @@ -3,17 +3,21 @@
   !.gitignore
   
   # whitelist `src` directories and their children, regardless of place
  +!src
   !src/**/
   !src/**/*.rs
   !Cargo.{toml,lock}
   
   # whitelist root `pysrc` directory
  +!/pysrc
   !/pysrc/*.py
   !pyproject.toml
   !poetry.lock
   
  +!/cmd
   !/cmd/*.go
   !main.go
   !go.{mod,sum}
   
  +!/docs
   !/docs/*.md
This is how I've been managing my dotfiles for over a decade (https://github.com/cstrahan/dotfiles/blob/master/.gitignore).

This is the email thread I started back on 2016/03/3 to pin down the gitignore behavior that we now have today (there was a regression between git version 2.6.0 and 2.7.0):

https://lore.kernel.org/git/1457057516.1962831.539160698.3C8...

(For posterity: the subject line was "Change in .gitignore handling: intended or bug?")

Re: .gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

#37

Post by meatmanek »

gruez wrote: post #35
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #10

Ideally people who have .DS_Store, .vscode, etc. would put them into their own $GIT_DIR/info/exclude files and not pollute the shared .gitignore with stuff from their personal setup.

[deleted]

What project is using .gitignore but not git?

Re: .gitignore Is Inherently Sisyphean

#38

Post by do_not_redeem »

gruez wrote: post #35
edflsafoiewq wrote: post #10

Ideally people who have .DS_Store, .vscode, etc. would put them into their own $GIT_DIR/info/exclude files and not pollute the shared .gitignore with stuff from their personal setup.

[deleted]

This post is about unwanted files ending up in git. So if you don't use git and you collaborate by swapping floppy disks or whatever, you won't have this problem. (But you'll have other problems, of course)
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