Re: [PATCH 3/6] dir: fix confusion based on variable tense

On Fri, Jan 31, 2020 at 10:04 AM SZEDER Gábor [off-list ref] wrote:

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 10:03:40PM +0000, Elijah Newren via GitGitGadget wrote:

quoted

From: Elijah Newren <redacted>

Despite having contributed several fixes in this area, I have for months
(years?) assumed that the "exclude" variable was a directive; this
caused me to think of it as a different mode we operate in and left me
confused as I tried to build up a mental model around why we'd need such
a directive.  I mostly tried to ignore it while focusing on the pieces I
was trying to understand.

Then I finally traced this variable all back to a call to is_excluded(),
meaning it was actually functioning as an adjective.  In particular, it
was a checked property ("Does this path match a rule in .gitignore?"),
rather than a mode passed in from the caller.  Change the variable name
to match the part of speech used by the function called to define it,
which will hopefully make these bits of code slightly clearer to the
next reader.

Slightly related questions: Does 'excluded' always mean ignored?  Or
is it possible for a file to be excluded but for some other reason
than being ignored?

I'm never really sure, and of course it doesn't help that we have both
'.gitignore' and '.git/info/exclude' files and conditions like:

quoted

+             if (excluded &&
+                 (dir->flags & DIR_SHOW_IGNORED_TOO) &&
+                 (dir->flags & DIR_SHOW_IGNORED_TOO_MODE_MATCHING)) {

Good question; no idea.  You can start digging into is_excluded() and
the pattern list stored in the dir struct and try to trace it back to
see if it's just the combination of ignore rules in .gitignore and
.git/info/exclude and core.excludesFile, or if there is something else
meant here.