Ability to dynamically ignore files at runtime.

[bobjackman]

A few functions accept an ignore=[] flag to prevent triggers on certain files, but most functions don't. In many cases, these ignores can be achieved with the .tiltignore file, but in some cases, these filenames aren't known until runtime.

We have the ability to dynamically watch files with watch_file(), but there is no counterpart ignore_file() or unwatch_file(). Adding this method would allow run-time ignore rules.

This may even be a potential solution for #1930 and #2602

In my particular case, I'm using local('helm pull ...') and k8s_yaml(helm('path/to/pulled/chart')). To ensure we always have a fresh copy of said chart, I'm also doing a local('rm -rf path/to/pulled/chart') immediately before the pull. If tilt is already running, then that chart is being watched. If I update my tiltfile, it gets re-run, which deletes that directory, which triggers a re-run, which successfully pulls the chart, and the newly created files, in turn, trigger another re-run, which again deletes the dir, ad nauseum.

See tilt-dev/tilt-extensions#19

Since helm() doesn't have an ignore=[] flag, there seems to be no way around this. The ability to dynamically un-watch this directory prior to deleting it would solve the problem.

[jazzdan]

Hey @kogi,

Thanks for opening this. I think that makes a lot of sense. This could be pretty easily hacked together by making a Tiltfile function that appends patterns as strings to the in-memory version of the .tiltignore file and letting the engine reload it as if the .tiltignore had changed.

[nicks]

fwiw, this has bitten me a lot too

[bobjackman]

Any updates/plans/roadmap for this, yet?

[nicks]

not yet! though there are some changes underway to change the internal data model for the ignores, to make it easier to make/debug changes like this

[bobjackman]

❤️