Where is the documentation for .ignore format?

[dbarnett]

Is there an official spec for what goes in a .ignore file? I like the spirit of it but I can't seem to find a user-oriented explanation of how it's supposed to work.

Starting from https://crates.io/crates/ignore and https://docs.rs/ignore/, I'm not seeing any explanation of what goes in .ignore files besides the description hinting that it relates to .gitignore files.

[BurntSushi]

It's mentioned in the guide:

For a more in depth description of how glob patterns in a .gitignore file are interpreted, please see man gitignore.

I suppose it's not fully precise in that it says .gitignore and not .ignore. But .ignore has the same semantics as .gitignore. The only reason it's in a distinct file is for precedence reasons.

Also, the ignore crate API and documentation are in general severely lacking. It's effectively a proof of concept that works decently enough.

[dbarnett]

Thanks! That does give me some starting points for the answers, but when considering integrating it with other projects (example: martinvonz/jj#3525), it'd be pretty awkward to point users deep into ripgrep docs for answers on how to use it.

[BurntSushi]

I agree that the current state is not great or ideal. Improving ignore, and its docs, has been on my TODO list for years. I do hope I'll get to it some day, but it probably isn't happening any time soon.