Re: Bug: git add does not process gitignore properly

[Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>]

On 23/06/2023 23:07, Eric Sunshine wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 22, 2023 at 3:56 PM David C Black <david.black@doulos.com> 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.

I think the usual way around this is to use patterns like

	/extern/*
	!/extern/bin/
	!/extern/ABOUT.md

see the example on the gitignore man page.

Best Wishes

Phillip