view mercurial/help/hgignore.txt @ 24735:07200e3332a1

tags: extract .hgtags filenodes cache to a standalone file

Resolution of .hgtags filenodes values has historically been a
performance pain point for large repositories, where reading individual
manifests can take over 100ms. Multiplied by hundreds or even thousands
of heads and resolving .hgtags filenodes becomes a performance issue.

This patch establishes a standalone cache file holding the .hgtags
filenodes for each changeset. After this patch, the .hgtags filenode
for any particular changeset should only have to be computed once
during the lifetime of the repository.

The introduced hgtagsfnodes1 cache file is modeled after the rev branch
cache: the cache is effectively an array of entries consisting of a
changeset fragment and the filenode for a revision. The file grows in
proportion to the length of the repository (24 bytes per changeset) and
is truncated when the repository is stripped. The file is not written
unless tag info is requested and tags have changed since last time.

This patch partially addresses issue4550. Future patches will split the
"tags" cache file into per-filter files and will refactor the cache
format to not capture the .hgtags fnodes, as these are now stored in
the hgtagsfnodes1 cache. This patch is capable of standing alone. We
should not have to wait on the tags cache filter split and format
refactor for this patch to land.

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 ``^``.

.. 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/