explorer.excludeGitIgnore fails to show unignored files and directories

Does this issue occur when all extensions are disabled?: Yes

VS Code Version: 1.69.2
OS Version: macOS Monterey

Both directories and files inside those directories that were unignored in .gitignore fails to be shown by explorer.

Steps to Reproduce:

cd /tmp
mkdir test-repo
cd test-repo
git init
mkdir d
touch d/a
touch b
git add d/a
git add b
git commit -m 'Initial commit'
echo '*' > .gitignore
echo '!d/' >> .gitignore
echo '!d/a' >> .gitignore
echo '!b' >> .gitignore
mkdir .vscode
echo '{"explorer.excludeGitIgnore": true}' > .vscode/settings.json
code .

Check that only 'b' is listed in the explorer.

Back in the console, check that no file is ignored by git:

git check-ignore d
git check-ignore d/a
git check-ignore b

Maybe related: #156076

The documentation of excludeGitIgnore says:

Controls whether entries in .gitignore should be parsed and excluded...

Perhaps the problem is that it tries to replicate git ignore rules and falls short of it, instead of querying git for the ignore status of files.

Perhaps the problem is that it tries to replicate git ignore rules and falls short of it, instead of querying git for the ignore status of files.

Yes we try to emulate it because we do not have access to the git executable in core. This has some good benefits too such as not needing git installed for this to work and working in web. I'm surprised b shows up here because we don't support exclude patterns

we don't support exclude patterns

Sorry, I'm not quite following you here. What do you mean with exclude patterns? !-prefixed one? Those would be re-include, or un-exclude, or better un-ignore patterns. If you mean that you don't support them at all then, yes, it's indeed surprising that b shows up here. Perhaps there is some partial support in place?

? Those would be re-include, or un-exclude, or better un-ignore patterns.

Yeah these. There's definitely many improvements to be made with this parser. I think many of the issues listed all stem from our parsing being slightly different than gits

Logan Ramos (@lramos15)

we don't support exclude patterns

Logan Ramos (@lramos15) I'm still surprised about this statement. I've also reported #156076 some days ago. Now, take as an example this .gitignore:

in a repo where file a.txt has been added. VSCode is oblivious to this fact, it acts as if a.txt were ignored despite it being in the repo. Now if I change .gitignore to:

*
!a.txt

the behavior of VSCode changes to unignore a.txt. #156076 is about the first behavior (ignoring a.txt), which is wrong. But that explicitly unignoring a.txt works around the issue seems to imply that VSCode does support !-patterns, at least to some extent.

So perhaps the situation is far from tidy, where

git
file explorer
search & quick open

have all different ideas of what's ignored and what's not?

the behavior of VSCode changes to unignore a.txt. #156076 is about the first behavior (ignoring a.txt), which is wrong. But that explicitly unignoring a.txt works around the issue seems to imply that VSCode does support !-patterns, at least to some extent.

Yeah technically we do try to support the most basic cases but complex cases break down more.

Git is completely separate but search excludes and files.exclude to hide items in the explorer should operate the same. Its explorer.excludeGitIgnore which does some more massaging of the globs to attempt to match gits behaviors.

If you're interested here's the code pointer for our parsing

vscode/src/vs/workbench/services/search/common/ignoreFile.ts

Line 9 in 78cd55a

export class IgnoreFile {

I bumped into this again and rereading our old conversation I realize I wasn't explicit enough about differences between file explorer and search/quick open regarding unignored directories and files inside them. Take for example:

*
!/.bashrc
!/.config/
!/.config/radian/
!/.config/radian/profile

Here both file explorer and search/quick open recognize .bashrc, but only search/quick open recognizes .config/radian/profile.

Logan Ramos (@lramos15)

Logan Ramos (@lramos15) any update on this? Might this: https://github.com/fabiospampinato/fast-ignore help?

Showing an excerpt from a real-world case where a simple exclude rule in a nested .gitignore file causes files to disappear from the Explorer, that are included by git (and understood by tree to be included). b.csv and c.csv are considered by git, but not shown in the Explorer.

The above case breaks even without the nested .gitignore file. Putting this in the root .gitignore isn't honored, either:

*.csv
!/src/a/b/*.csv

Fix gitignore negation patterns not overriding parent/global rules

Fix gitignore negation in child files not overriding parent/global ru…

I can still repro the issue, only 'b' shows up in the explorer, we should see d, d/a.

Bryan Chen (@bryanchen-d)

Bryan Chen (@bryanchen-d) Thanks, yes, that's correct - the PR fixed part of this, but not all.

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explorer.excludeGitIgnore fails to show unignored files and directories #156077

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explorer.excludeGitIgnore fails to show unignored files and directories #156077

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memeplex commented on Jul 24, 2022

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