Ripgrep: .gitignore not respected outside of git repositories

[Tim-at-AST]

What version of ripgrep are you using?

$ rg --version ripgrep 0.10.0 -SIMD -AVX (compiled) +SIMD +AVX (runtime)

How did you install ripgrep?

macports

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

mac osx 10.14.1 (mojave)

Describe your question, feature request, or bug.

here is my .gitignore file:

$ cat ~/.gitignore **/*.pdf *.pdf

I am trying to ignore pdf files in my rg search.

Here is a test directory:
````
$ cd /tmp/test
$ touch a.pdf b.txt
$ ls
a.pdf
b.txt

$ rg --files --debug
b.txt
a.pdf
````

The problem is that the file a.pdf should be ignored.

[BurntSushi]

Your .gitignore is in your home directory and you are searching outside your home directory. Therefore, what you're observing is expected behavior. Try using a standard git repository setup instead. See man gitignore for how to specify global gitignore rules.

[Tim-at-AST]

The example was badly chosen. But the problem persists inside the home directory also. Here is a better example:

````
$ cat ~/.gitignore
*/.pdf
.pdf
*/*.jpg
$ cd /Users/tim/documents/rg/test
$ touch a.pdf b.txt
$ ls
a.pdf
b.txt
$ rg --files --debug
DEBUG|rg::config|src/config.rs:37: /Users/tim/gdrive/tim/app-support/ripgreprc: arguments loaded from config file: ["--max-columns=150", "--smart-case"]
DEBUG|rg::args|src/args.rs:508: final argv: ["rg", "--max-columns=150", "--smart-case", "--files", "--debug"]
DEBUG|globset|globset/src/lib.rs:429: built glob set; 0 literals, 0 basenames, 2 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
b.txt
a.pdf

`````

[BurntSushi]

Well, is /Users/tim/documents/rg/test a git repository? If not, then .gitignore isn't going to apply to it because, well, it's not a git repository. This is expected behavior. Here is a transcript showing this:

$ touch a.pdf b.txt

$ rg --files
b.txt
a.pdf

$ echo '*.pdf' > .gitignore

$ rg --files
b.txt
a.pdf

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/ripgrep-1109/.git/

$ rg --files
b.txt

$ rm -rf .git

$ rg --files
b.txt
a.pdf

$ mv .gitignore .ignore

$ rg --files
b.txt

[Tim-at-AST]

ok, I changed .gitignore to .rgignore and problem solved.
The documentation seems to me to indicate that .gitignore was used by rg.

After recursive search, ripgrep's most important feature is what it doesn't search. By default, when you search a directory, ripgrep will ignore all of the following:

1. Files and directories that match the rules in your .gitignore glob pattern.

[BurntSushi]

The documentation seems to me to indicate that .gitignore was used by rg.

Right, _in a git repository_. I agree that the docs could be more precise on this point. In particular, I do not think ripgrep always behaved this way, but I can't find the corresponding bug report that prompted the change to require a git repository before respecting .gitignore.

[anntzer]

Note that currently, if rg follows a symlink that points to a subdirectory of a git repo, it will not detect that it is in a git repo, and thus won't respect a gitignore file in that subdirectory (even though that gitignore is indeed in a git repo), as shown by:

$ tree -a -L 3
.
├── a
│   └── subdir -> ../c/subdir
└── c
    ├── .git
    │   ├── branches
    │   ├── config
    │   ├── description
    │   ├── HEAD
    │   ├── hooks
    │   ├── info
    │   ├── objects
    │   └── refs
    └── subdir
        ├── .gitignore
        └── somefile
$ cat a/subdir/.gitignore
*
$ rg --follow --files
a/subdir/somedir  # oops, not ignored.

I would thus suggest revisiting the choice of not respecting gitignores outside of git repos -- the alternative being, I guess, to check for each resolved symlink whether it is in a git repo.

[BurntSushi]

@anntzer Yes, that's interesting, although it's definitely a distinct bug from this ticket. My guess is that I'd probably mark it as wontfix. I don't think I'm willing to start messing with the resolved paths of symlinks.

[anntzer]

That's why I listed checking the resolved paths as the alternative solution -- if you don't remember what change prompted you to ignore gitignores outside of git repositories, perhaps you can consider the above an argument in favor of always taking them into account?

[BurntSushi]

I'm not going to change that. It's semantically incorrect and leads to other types of bugs. I wrote "I don't remember" above because it's often inconvenient for me to spend the time to remember. Looking at revision history, I found this commit https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/commit/e65ca21a which fixed this bug https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/issues/934

[anntzer]

Sure, thanks for the reference.