Re: .gitignore and .bzrignore files.

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Eric S. Raymond writes:
 > Nicolas Richard <address@hidden>:

 > > I have one question : what goes in those ignore files ? I've
 > > heard some people want to ignore files created during
 > > compilation, while some other don't because they compile off tree
 > > and want to know if files get added in the tree.

This is a tough question.  However, all of the VCSes I know of provide
both cascading ignores (so that you can ignore the backup and lock
files your editor produces in a personal .ignore, and ignore the .o
produced by a C compiler in a C project and the .pyc files produced by
Python), and some way to clean up and list files that are ignored as
well as unregistered files that aren't ignored.

 > Shortly I will post to the list about the complications implied by
 > various ways of handling ignore files.  Determining the right thing
 > is not at all simple.

I'd say do what's simplest.  I don't see why one can't live with a
pretty coarse approximation for a while.