view mercurial/help/hgignore.txt @ 35963:efbd04238029

cmdutil: convert _revertprefetch() to a generic stored file hook (API)

This will be used by LFS to fetch required files in a group for multiple
commands, prior to being accessed.  That avoids the one-at-a-time fetch when the
filelog wrapper goes to access it, and it is missing locally (which costs two
round trips to the server.)  The core command list that needs this is probably
at least:

  - annotate
  - archive (which is also used by extdiff)
  - cat
  - diff
  - export
  - grep
  - verify (sadly)
  - anything that has the '{data}' template

There are no core users of the revert prefetch hook, and never have been since
it was introduced in 45e02cfad4bd for remotefilelog.  Thanks to Yuya for
figuring out a way to reliably trigger the deprecated warning.  Unfortunately,
it wanted to blame the caller of revert.  Passing along an adjusted stack level
seemed the least bad choice (although it still blames a core function).

One thing to note is that the store lock isn't being held when this is called.
I'm not at all familiar with remotefilelog or its locking requirements, so this
may not be a big deal.  Currently, LFS doesn't hold a lock when downloading
files.  Even though largefiles doesn't either, I'm starting to think it should,
and maybe the .hg/store/lock isn't good enough to cover the globally shared
cache.

.. api::

   The cmdutil._revertprefetch() hook point for prefetching stored files has
   been replaced by the command agnostic cmdutil._prefetchfiles().  The new
   function takes a list of files, instead of a list of lists of files.

Synopsis
========

The Mercurial system uses a file called ``.hgignore`` in the root
directory of a repository to control its behavior when it searches
for files that it is not currently tracking.

Description
===========

The working directory of a Mercurial repository will often contain
files that should not be tracked by Mercurial. These include backup
files created by editors and build products created by compilers.
These files can be ignored by listing them in a ``.hgignore`` file in
the root of the working directory. The ``.hgignore`` file must be
created manually. It is typically put under version control, so that
the settings will propagate to other repositories with push and pull.

An untracked file is ignored if its path relative to the repository
root directory, or any prefix path of that path, is matched against
any pattern in ``.hgignore``.

For example, say we have an untracked file, ``file.c``, at
``a/b/file.c`` inside our repository. Mercurial will ignore ``file.c``
if any pattern in ``.hgignore`` matches ``a/b/file.c``, ``a/b`` or ``a``.

In addition, a Mercurial configuration file can reference a set of
per-user or global ignore files. See the ``ignore`` configuration
key on the ``[ui]`` section of :hg:`help config` for details of how to
configure these files.

To control Mercurial's handling of files that it manages, many
commands support the ``-I`` and ``-X`` options; see
:hg:`help <command>` and :hg:`help patterns` for details.

Files that are already tracked are not affected by .hgignore, even
if they appear in .hgignore. An untracked file X can be explicitly
added with :hg:`add X`, even if X would be excluded by a pattern
in .hgignore.

Syntax
======

An ignore file is a plain text file consisting of a list of patterns,
with one pattern per line. Empty lines are skipped. The ``#``
character is treated as a comment character, and the ``\`` character
is treated as an escape character.

Mercurial supports several pattern syntaxes. The default syntax used
is Python/Perl-style regular expressions.

To change the syntax used, use a line of the following form::

  syntax: NAME

where ``NAME`` is one of the following:

``regexp``
  Regular expression, Python/Perl syntax.
``glob``
  Shell-style glob.

The chosen syntax stays in effect when parsing all patterns that
follow, until another syntax is selected.

Neither glob nor regexp patterns are rooted. A glob-syntax pattern of
the form ``*.c`` will match a file ending in ``.c`` in any directory,
and a regexp pattern of the form ``\.c$`` will do the same. To root a
regexp pattern, start it with ``^``.

Subdirectories can have their own .hgignore settings by adding
``subinclude:path/to/subdir/.hgignore`` to the root ``.hgignore``. See
:hg:`help patterns` for details on ``subinclude:`` and ``include:``.

.. note::

  Patterns specified in other than ``.hgignore`` are always rooted.
  Please see :hg:`help patterns` for details.

Example
=======

Here is an example ignore file. ::

  # use glob syntax.
  syntax: glob

  *.elc
  *.pyc
  *~

  # switch to regexp syntax.
  syntax: regexp
  ^\.pc/