Creation of/Modifications to the .gitignore file when running quarto render

[jakobarendt]

Description

Thank you so much to all for developing the incredibly powerful Quarto! I am currently writing my master's thesis with your software, and I am only starting to grasp what it can do.

One thing I have noticed, is that it makes some changes to my .gitignore file, when I run quarto render for my quarto book project. You have already explained this further in this answer.

In my case, however, it adds /.quarto/ as an item to the .gitignore file, even though I already have .quarto in it. To my understanding of the syntax, the latter is even more "restrictive" than the former in the sense that it always excludes .quarto directories/files independently of where are they are stored relative to the .gitignore file.

I imagine that you still had you reasons for implementing it the way it is now. Why does quarto render not acknowledge .quarto as a .gitignore parameter?

Another aspect that I want to mention here is that having quarto render acknowledge the more restrictive .quarto exclusion would make it more consistent with the R command usethis::git_vaccinate(), since there the ignore parameter is also .quarto.

Quarto version: 1.3.361
Machine: macOS Ventura 13.4

[mcanouil]

It should be easy easy enough to tweak the regex to avoid having both exclusion with and without leading /.

To note, the /.quarto/ thing is L17 below.

quarto-cli/src/project/project-gitignore.ts

Lines 7 to 94 in 7414705

	import { join } from "path/mod.ts";
	import { existsSync, walkSync } from "fs/mod.ts";
	import { which } from "../core/path.ts";
	import { execProcess } from "../core/process.ts";
	import { kQuartoScratch } from "./project-scratch.ts";
	import { lines } from "../core/text.ts";
	import { isEnvDir } from "../core/jupyter/capabilities.ts";
	export const kQuartoIgnore = [`/${kQuartoScratch}/`];
	export async function ensureGitignore(
	dir: string,
	forceEnv = false,
	): Promise<boolean> {
	// if .gitignore exists, then ensure it has the requisite entries
	const gitignorePath = join(dir, ".gitignore");
	if (existsSync(gitignorePath)) {
	const gitignore = lines(Deno.readTextFileSync(gitignorePath))
	.map((line) => line.trim());
	const requiredEntries: string[] = [];
	for (const requiredEntry of gitignoreEntries(dir, forceEnv)) {
	if (!gitignore.includes(requiredEntry)) {
	requiredEntries.push(requiredEntry);
	}
	}
	// see if we need to gitignore any .local files
	const kLocalEntry = `/_*.local`;
	if (!gitignore.includes(kLocalEntry)) {
	for (const walk of walkSync(dir, { maxDepth: 1 })) {
	if (walk.name.match(/^_.*?\.local$/)) {
	requiredEntries.push(kLocalEntry);
	break;
	}
	}
	}
	if (requiredEntries.length > 0) {
	writeGitignore(dir, gitignore.concat(requiredEntries));
	return true;
	} else {
	return false;
	}
	} else if (forceEnv) {
	await createGitignore(dir, forceEnv);
	return true;
	} else if (await which("git")) {
	// if it doesn't exist then auto-create if we are in a git project or we had the force flag
	const result = await execProcess({
	cmd: ["git", "rev-parse"],
	cwd: dir,
	stdout: "piped",
	stderr: "piped",
	});
	if (result.success) {
	await createGitignore(dir, forceEnv);
	return true;
	} else {
	return false;
	}
	} else {
	return false;
	}
	}
	export function createGitignore(dir: string, forceEnv = false) {
	writeGitignore(dir, gitignoreEntries(dir, forceEnv));
	}
	export function gitignoreEntries(dir: string, forceEnv = false) {
	// detect virtual environment
	const kEnv = "env/";
	if (forceEnv || isEnvDir(join(dir, kEnv))) {
	return ["/" + kEnv].concat(kQuartoIgnore);
	} else {
	return kQuartoIgnore;
	}
	}
	function writeGitignore(dir: string, lines: string[]) {
	// write gitignore
	const lineEnding = Deno.build.os === "windows" ? "\r\n" : "\n";
	Deno.writeTextFileSync(
	join(dir, ".gitignore"),
	lines.join(lineEnding) + lineEnding,
	);
	}

[jakobarendt]

Before opening a pull request, I want to make sure I have understood your answer correctly. I do not have much experience with TypeScript and its regexes.

Would L17 change to
1.

export const kQuartoIgnore = [`^\/?${kQuartoScratch}\/?$`];

2. or

export const kQuartoIgnore = [`\/?${kQuartoScratch}\/?`];

3. or

export const kQuartoIgnore = [`/?${kQuartoScratch}/?`];

I am asking this as I am not sure whether the anchor symbols ^ and $, and the backslash infront of the forward slash are actually needed.

[mcanouil]

I was mostly pointing out where all this is happening.
The smart thing to do would be to not add /.quarto/ if .quarto/ or .quarto is already in the .gitignore.
But those are not the only directories added by Quarto, there is for example /.luarc.json.

You don't really need to do a PR (although it's welcome) for now, as there might be a need for discussion.

[mcanouil]

I converted this discussion to a feature request and closing it in favour of:

• Improve how Quarto handles .gitignore to keep it clean #6011