Re: git 2.34.0: Behavior of `**` in gitignore is different from previous versions.

Am 19.11.21 um 15:51 schrieb Derrick Stolee:

What is unclear to me is what exactly "match a directory" means.
If we ignore a directory, then we ignore everything inside it (until
another pattern says we should care about it), but the converse
should also hold: if we have a pattern like "!data/**/", then that
should mean "include everything inside data/<A>/ where <A> is any
directory name".

My inability to form a mental model where the existing behavior
matches the documented specification is an indicator that this was
changed erroneously. A revert patch is included at the end of this
message.

If anyone could help clarify my understanding here, then maybe
there is room for improving the documentation.

You form a wrong mental model when you start with the grand picture of a
working tree. That is, when you say

- here I have theeeeeese many files and directories,
- and I want to ignore some: foo/**/,
- but I don't want to ignore others: !bar/**/.

This forms the wrong mental model because that is not how Git sees the
working tree: it never has a grand picture of all of its contents.

Git only ever sees the contents of one directory. When Git determines
that a sub-directory is ignored, then that one's contents are never
inspected, and there is no opportunity to un-ignore some of the
sub-directory's contents.

-- Hannes