using globs and .alexignore

[Heinz N. Gies]

Hi,
I'm running in some issues with using .alexignore and globs. The basic problem I'm trying to solve is:

1. Ignore some .md files
2. Lint all other .md files in this and all folders underneath it (i.e. **/*.md)

This will cause an error that the ignored .md file is included.

One solution is to specify all subfolders but with 15 and growing that's really painful :(

[Titus]

Hi there, welcome!

Could you provide more info? Unfortunately you removed the issue template. Filling that in really helps us help you. See https://github.com/get-alex/.github/blob/master/.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/1-bug.md and https://github.com/get-alex/.github/blob/master/support.md#asking-quality-questions

[Heinz N. Gies]

Hi! I can add those but I didn't remove the template, the "question" template (I don't think it's a bug, just a question) I used is empty other than a comment in the beginning.

I found that for .md files using alex . instead of alex solves the issue, but it persists when using files Alex doesn't discover automatically.

---

name: Question - how to deal with globs and .alexignore
about: how to deal with globs and .alexignore
labels: status/open, type/question

Subject of the issue

Dealing with

Your environment

• OS: Linux 5.4.0-39-generic #43-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 19 10:28:31 UTC 2020 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Packages: None, not a node project
• Env: None, not a node project

Steps to reproduce

1. create an Alex ignore file that ignores a folder (or file)
2. use a pattern to find certain files that would also include files in the ignore file

mkdir example
cd example
mkdir src
mkdir ignored
touch src/bad.rs
echo "poop" > src/bad.rs
touch ignored/something.rs
echo "ignored/**" > .alexignore
alex **/*.rs
cd ..

Expected behaviour

A way to achieve "all files of this type but not the ignored ones".

I've no preference how this works a few ideas however:

1. --allow-ignored-globs (toggels the behaviour)
2. remove ignored files silently from globs
3. --discover-extensions rs -e markdown -e md -e txt (allow adding extensions to discover via alex .
4. everything I've missed / not thought about :D

Actual behaviour

I could not find a way to include files where folders are ignored that might also match the pattern without Alex erroring.

[Titus]

Ahh good, sorry, my mistake, I should fix that 😅

I think I almost understand your question.
It seems your original and the new explanaintion are different? Because the original question should be supported as alex ., with a couple of globs in an .alexignore file?

So is the question about new extensions, such as .rs?

[Titus]

One solution is to specify all subfolders but with 15 and growing that's really painful :(

Instead of generalizing the question, could you provide exactly what you do? What alex ... looks like, and what the .alexignore file looks like?

[Heinz N. Gies]

This pretty much sums the issue up:

mkdir example
cd example
mkdir src
mkdir ignored
touch src/bad.rs
echo "poop" > src/bad.rs
touch ignored/something.rs
echo "ignored/**" > .alexignore # ignore file
alex **/*.rs # alex call
cd ..

alex . seems to work fine for files that are recognized if not it's not

[Titus]

Right. To confirm, the question then is about new extensions, such as .rs? You don’t have problems if the extension is .md?

[Heinz N. Gies]

Yes, I think alex . solves the issue for recognized files, or at least I couldn't reproduce it after finding that so it looks like being related only to additional extensions.

[Titus]

Several thoughts on this:

• It is definitely not suggested to use alex on rust files. Please don’t do it. Rather, integrate with a rust tool to check comments or so.
• We can go the route of adding support for passing -e, --ext to the cli
• We can support a --silently-ignore flag

I don’t feel very strongly about 2 and 3, because of 1 🤔
The whole reason for having the error in place, is that it’s probably a user error and being silent is often unexpected to users.