[Monotone-devel] inventory, status, and .mtn-ignore

[Stephen Leake]

I've run across an inconsistency between 'mtn automate inventory' and
'mtn status', in the way they handle .mtn-ignore.

If a file is known to mtn, but is also ignored due to an ignored
directory in .mtn-ignore, then 'mtn status' will report 'no changes',
while 'mtn automate inventory' will list it as 'missing'.

This is because 'mtn automate inventory' does not descend into ignored
directories, in order to save time. The time savings are significant
in some cases; when the ignored directory contains all the object
files output by a compiler, for example.

I ran across this in my daytime job, and it took me a while to figure
out what was going on.

This is a user error; directories containing known files should not be
in .mtn-ignore. 

I added a warning in automate.cc inventory_determine_states. If a file
is 'missing', also check if it is ignored, and output a warning.

I also added a comment in monotone.texi for this.


Perhaps 'mtn status' and/or 'mtn ls' should do the same check and
output a similar warning?

--
-- Stephe