Subject: Re: Wrong gitignore precedence?

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Apr 2015 11:59:04 -0700

Yohei Endo <[email-masked]> writes:

> I read the document of gitignore (http://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore),
> and learned that $GIT_DIR/info/exclude has higher precedence than
> the file specified by core.excludesfile.
>
> But I noticed that patterns in core.excludesfile override patterns in
> $GIT_DIR/info/exclude.

I tend to agree that info/exclude which is per-repository personal
preference should take precedence over $XDG_HOME/git/ignore which is
a personal preference across repositories that are accessed from
that machine.

It appears that the precedence was screwed-up between these two
files from the very beginning when 896bdfa2 (add: Support specifying
an excludes file with a configuration variable, 2007-02-27)
introduced core.excludesfile variable; seeing that nobody so far
complained with the discrepancy between the documentation and the
behaviour, it would indicate either (1) nobody reads the docs, or
(2) nobody uses both at the same time.

Swapping the order in the code this late in the game after 8 years
may affect people who have come to rely on the current behaviour and
never read the doc, which is somewhat worrying, though.