Only some ignores applied when searching a sub-directory

[SimonSapin]

What version of ripgrep are you using?

ripgrep 12.1.1
-SIMD -AVX (compiled)
+SIMD +AVX (runtime)

How did you install ripgrep?

System package https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/ripgrep/

What operating system are you using ripgrep on?

Arch Linux

Describe your bug.

When giving a sub-directory of the current directory to search as a second command-line argument to ripgrep, only some patterns of .ignore in the current directory are applied.

What are the steps to reproduce the behavior?

mkdir tmp
cd tmp
mkdir rust
mkdir rust/target
echo needle > rust/source.rs
echo needle > rust/target/rustdoc-output.html
echo rust/target > .ignore
rg --files-with-matches needle
rg --files-with-matches needle rust
echo target >> .ignore
rg --files-with-matches needle rust

What is the actual behavior?

The first and third rg commands only print rust/source.rs as expected. However the second one prints both rust/source.rs and rust/target/rustdoc-output.html.

With --debug added, and -j1 for more readable output:

$ rg --files-with-matches needle --debug -j1
DEBUG|grep_regex::literal|crates/regex/src/literal.rs:58: literal prefixes detected: Literals { lits: [Complete(needle)], limit_size: 250, limit_class: 10 }
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 0 literals, 0 basenames, 12 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 1 literals, 0 basenames, 0 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
DEBUG|ignore::walk|crates/ignore/src/walk.rs:1730: ignoring ./.ignore: Ignore(IgnoreMatch(Hidden))
rust/source.rs
DEBUG|ignore::walk|crates/ignore/src/walk.rs:1730: ignoring ./rust/target: Ignore(IgnoreMatch(Gitignore(Glob { from: Some("./.ignore"), original: "rust/target", actual: "rust/target", is_whitelist: false, is_only_dir: false })))

$ rg --files-with-matches needle rust --debug -j1
DEBUG|grep_regex::literal|crates/regex/src/literal.rs:58: literal prefixes detected: Literals { lits: [Complete(needle)], limit_size: 250, limit_class: 10 }
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 0 literals, 0 basenames, 12 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 1 literals, 0 basenames, 0 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
rust/source.rs
rust/target/rustdoc-output.html

After echo target >> .ignore:

$ rg --files-with-matches needle rust --debug -j1
DEBUG|grep_regex::literal|crates/regex/src/literal.rs:58: literal prefixes detected: Literals { lits: [Complete(needle)], limit_size: 250, limit_class: 10 }
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 0 literals, 0 basenames, 12 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
DEBUG|globset|crates/globset/src/lib.rs:431: built glob set; 1 literals, 1 basenames, 0 extensions, 0 prefixes, 0 suffixes, 0 required extensions, 0 regexes
rust/source.rs
DEBUG|ignore::walk|crates/ignore/src/walk.rs:1730: ignoring rust/target: Ignore(IgnoreMatch(Gitignore(Glob { from: Some("/tmp/tmp/.ignore"), original: "target", actual: "**/target", is_whitelist: false, is_only_dir: false })))

What is the expected behavior?

Each command should only print rust/source.rs, as the HTML file should be ignored.

One might imagine that when searching a sub-directory only .ignore files under that sub-directory are considered, but the third command shows that is not the case. (The more general ignore pattern is not the desired one, it only serves to show that the .ignore file is indeed read.)

Work-around

I’ve managed to find a set up that does what I want by creating a .ignore file in the rust sub-directory of the project instead, with a /target pattern.

Other suggestion

After trying a few things and seeing unexpected results I wanted to find out details of the syntax of .ignore files. For example, is an initial slash meaningful?

I had to dig to find the answer in https://docs.rs/ignore/0.4.17/ignore/struct.WalkBuilder.html:

.ignore files have the same semantics as gitignore files

and

.gitignore files have match semantics as described in the gitignore man page.

It would be good to repeat these two facts in ripgrep’s own docs.

[goto-engineering]

This works for me with rg 12.1.1 on macOS:

edit: nevermind, I realized that you're fixing the problem as part of the recreate steps. If I only execute the first 2 rg commands, I'm getting the same thing.

[SimonSapin]

Ah yes, sorry, I should have separated that last step some more.

To me it’s not really a fix since it also ignore directories or files named target at any other location, which is not necessarily desirable. I only included it to show that .ignore in the current directory is read at all when searching a sub-directory. (It might make some sense if it weren’t even though that’s nat what I’d want in this case.)