.gitignore not respected unless there is a .git folder?

[anishkny]

First up thanks for the amazing work BurntSushi and team! 🎉

I am using a WalkBuilder with git_ignore(true). Here's the tree:

$ tree -a
.
├── .gitignore
├── file1
├── file2
└── file3

$ cat .gitignore
file2

In this case, the walker includes file2 even though it is part of .gitignore.

But if I simply touch a file called .git, then file2 is excluded.

tree -a
.
├── .git     <---- empty file, causes .gitignore to be respected
├── .gitignore
├── file1
├── file2
└── file3

Is this expected behavior?

[BurntSushi]

Yes. It's documented in the man page. And there is even a flag to disable it: --no-require-git.

Alternatively, use .ignore or .rgignore, which are independent of git.