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

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Adam Piatyszek [off-list ref] writes:
...

quoted

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.