Re: [PATCH] .gitignore: ignore temporary files from 'bear'

[Nicolas Schier <nsc@kernel.org>]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2025 at 04:38:24PM -0700, Nathan Chancellor wrote:
> Hi Brendan,
> 
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2025 at 08:59:43AM +0000, Brendan Jackman wrote:
> > Bear [0] is a tool for generating compile_commands.json. For Kbuild,
> > Bear is not useful, since Kbuild already generates the necessary info
> > and that can be converted to compile_commands.json by
> > gen_compile_commads.py.
> > 
> > However, for code in tools/, it's handy. For example, this command
> > updates compile_commands.json so that clangd code navigation will also
> > work for the VMA unit tests:
> > 
> > 	bear --append -- make -C tools/testing/vma -j
> > 
> > Bear generates some temporary files. These are usually deleted again
> > but having them show up ephemerally confuses tools that trigger
> > recompilation on source code changes. Ignore them in Git so that these
> > tools can tell they aren't source code.
> > 
> > [0]: https://github.com/rizsotto/Bear
> > 
> > Signed-off-by: Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@google.com>
> 
> We can likely take this via the Kbuild tree. I do wonder if this would
> be better in a tools/.gitignore file since bear is really only of use
> there but I am not sure it matters much.

yeah, please consider using tools/.gitignore.  Please have a look at
this thread about ignoring files from "external" tools:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAHk-=wiJHMje8cpiTajqrLrM23wZK0SWetuK1Bd67c0OGM_BzQ@mail.gmail.com/

If using tools/.gitignore is not possible, I think the best way for
ignoring files that are not natively related to kernel build tools is to 
update the local ~/.config/git/ignore, as suggested in

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CAK7LNAQas0cK7pgi72tYC3yU=ZkQxnr41YYW1mXd-sWiHtG+UA@mail.gmail.com/

compare to:

https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/git-basics/ignoring-files#configuring-ignored-files-for-all-repositories-on-your-computer

Kind regards,
Nicolas