Re: Why does git track directory listed in .gitignore/".git/info/exclude"?

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Adam Piatyszek <ediap@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
>...
>> Can you seen any drawbacks of such modification?
>
> I do not see a problem if you are saying:
>
> 	when the user has an entry 'dir/' in .gitignore, it
> 	should match directory 'dir'.
>
> However, there is a subtle problem in a naive implementation of
> that.  IOW,
>
> 	when the user has an entry 'dir/' in .gitignore, behave
> 	as if the entry were 'dir' instead.
>
> is wrong.
>
> When you say "foo", you mean "I want either 'foo' that is a
> non-directory, or everything under 'foo' if that is a
> directory".  When you say "foo/", you are saying "I do not want
> 'foo' if it is a non-directory.  I want everything under 'foo'
> if and only if that is a directory".  Compare:
>
> 	git ls-files -s Makefile/
>       git ls-files -s Makefile
>
> The first one is silent, and the latter answers.  On the other
> hand, for a directory, both of these give you the same:
>
> 	git ls-files Documentation/
>       git ls-files Documentation

Perhaps "wrong" might have been too strong a word, and I should
have said "inconsistent with other parts of the system."

It could be that people may find pathspec "Makefile/" meant
exactly the same thing as "Makefile" in ls-files and other
commands.  If that is the case, then we could uniformly strip
the trailing slash, both in all of these commands _and_ .gitignore
entries.

In any case, their behaviour should be consistent.