Re: [PATCH] maint: fix alphabetical order in .gitignore

[Pádraig Brady]

On 01/02/2013 02:17 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 01/02/2013 06:15 AM, Pádraig Brady wrote:
>
> > > +# Ensure that .gitignore is sorted alphabetically.
> > > +sc_prohibit_unsorted_gitignore:
> > > +    @t1=.gitignore; t2=.gitignore.sorted;                \
> > > +    LANG=C sort -u < $$t1 > $$t2;                    \
> > > +    st=0; diff -u $$t1 $$t2 || st=1;                \
> > > +    rm -f $$t2;                            \
> > > +    exit $$st
> > > +
> > >    # Ensure that all version-controlled test cases are listed in
> > > $(all_tests).
> > >    sc_tests_list_consistency:
> > >        @bs="\\";                            \
> >
> > The part above is probably best in gnulib/top/maint.mk
> > since that's where the sorted insertion is coming from.
>
> No.  .gitignore syntax has situations where it must NOT be sorted, and
> adding this as a syntax check rule will prevent useful situations where
> unsorted files make sense.
>
> For example, in libvirt, we have the following in .gitignore:
>
> ...
> /po/*
> ...
> !/po/*.po
> !/po/POTFILES.in
> !/po/libvirt.pot
>
> since libvirt likes to keep the .po files checked into git, but doesn't
> want to explicitly enumerate up whatever cruft of the day that different
> versions of gettext happen to also stick in that directory.  But sorting
> this directory would put the override inclusions _before_ the blanket
> exclusion, and since git ignores files based on the _last_ rule present,
> rather than the first, sorting would break this usage.

Yes I'll sed '/^!/d' before the compare,
and add a comment to both sort_patterns()
and the syntax check rule to avoid becoming out of sync.

> > Note LC_ALL is set to C in maint.mk already.
> > I'll push a patch in your name to gnulib soon.
>
> Please don't, at least not without more discussion.

Sorry yes.
I always mail first.

thanks,
Pádraig.