Subject: Re: Git attributes ignored for root directory

From: Gioele Barabucci <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 05 Oct 2011 19:56:05 +0200

On 05/10/2011 19:38, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> In fact the support for gitattributes using patterns involving "." was
>> pretty spotty in v1.7.6 too.  For example,
>
> The attribute patterns (or exclude patterns for that matter) were never
> designed to name "the current directory". The way to name "everything *in*
> this directory" has always been to say "*" (the "* text=auto" example in
> the documentation says it shows how to set the attribute "for all
> files"). Admittedly the pattern may miss ".*" files.

What if I do not want to say things about the "content" of the directory 
but about the directory itself? This is exactly my case.

> I have to agree that things like "./" and "."  were outside the scope of
> the design; in some cases undefined behaviour given to such patterns may
> have made sense but that was mere accident.

Actually what I have in my `~/.gitattributes` is

     /. show_in_prompt=no

Anyway, I see a conflict between

>   - A leading slash matches the beginning of the pathname.
>     For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
>     "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".

and

>   - If the pattern is a single dot and nothing else, it matches everything
>     in the current directory.

in the first case `.` is treated as a "glob dot", while in the second 
case it is treated as a "regexp dot". I would find this confusing.

Patterns can match directories using `/foo`. Why don't you just say that 
`.` is equivalent to `./` and `/foo/.` is equivalent to `/foo`?

> So "./" in .gitignore or .gitattributes at the toplevel would match all
> the top-level directories and files but does not apply to the paths
> contained in the matched directories. "." in .gitignore or .gitattributes
> at the toplevel would match everything under the sun.

In the case of `.gitignore`, `/foo/.` and `/foo/` would have the same 
effect and they look sane to me.

> Would it be sensible to assume that users would not be surprised if
> ". text=auto" meant that the attribute applies to every file in the
> worktree?

I would be surprised as I expect `.` to be a "glob dot". But maybe it is 
just me and my prejudices :)

Bye,

-- 
Gioele Barabucci <[email-masked]>