Help with gitignore

[vincerubinetti]

I have a repo structure that looks like this

/_cite/.cache/some-junk-abc123
/_cite/.cache/cache.db
/_cite/.cache/more-junk-abc123

I want to keep the cache.db file in git, but not the other stuff in that folder. Following the advice of this stackoverflow post, my .gitignore looks like this:

.cache
!cache.db

My workflow that tries to commit this cache.db file looks like:

      - uses: stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action@v5
        with:
          file_pattern: _cite/.cache/cache.db
          commit_message: "Commit cache"

But I get the error:

INPUT_FILE_PATTERN: _cite/.cache/cache.db
The following paths are ignored by one of your .gitignore files:
_cite/.cache
hint: Use -f if you really want to add them.
hint: Disable this message with "git config advice.addIgnoredFile false"
Error: Invalid status code: 1
    at ChildProcess.<anonymous> (/home/runner/work/_actions/stefanzweifel/git-auto-commit-action/v5/index.js:17:19)

This is probably more of a git question than a question specifically with this action. But perhaps it has to do with the specific git commands called in this action, because locally, my gitignore pattern seems to correctly add/ignore the proper files, and never throws such an error when adding/committing/pushing.

Any ideas, besides using the "force" flag as it suggests? Could the disable_globbing flag be relevant?

[stefanzweifel]

This is truly more of a git-question. :)

In a local test-repo specifying the full path of the cache.db file in .gitignore helped.

_cite/.cache/*
!_cite/.cache/cache.db

File inside .cache were still ignored but cache.db is detected and can be committed.
Can you give this a try? Setting the full path in .gitignore.

---

disable_globbing wouldn't really help here. It runs set -o noglob; in the bash script and prevents strings like file_pattern: '*.md' from being expanded to a list of files.

[vincerubinetti]

Yeah sorry I should've posted this somewhere else, it's a git question.

I just tried, locally, doing git add _cite/.cache/cache.db, and it gave me the same error, so it definitely has nothing to do with the particular commands/flags/whatever of this action.

Personally this error surprises me... it doesn't seem intuitive. VSCode correctly marks cache.db as being tracked and everything else in /.cache as not. And also, doing git add --all doesn't throw any error 🙃

Your suggestion for the .gitignore worked though. Maybe my shorter .gitignore that I got from StackOverflow isn't really a robust/intended pattern. Or maybe this is just a non-user-friendly aspect of git.

[stefanzweifel]

Yeah sorry I should've posted this somewhere else, it's a git question.

Don't worry! Always happy to help.

---

Sublime Text also showed me the correct behaviour. 🫠
.gitignore or the different git-commands in general can become quite non-user-friendly if you want to do more complex tasks. I've learned a lot through building and maintaining this action, but I still have the feeling I only know 10% of what's possible with git.