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I'm creating a new Spring Boot app. I'm more than moderately familiar with .gitignore patterns, but I see something deliberately templated that has the smell of "intent" on it. The below is produced by the Spring Initializr in many IDEs.

target/
!.mvn/wrapper/maven-wrapper.jar
!**/src/main/**/target/
!**/src/test/**/target/
 ...
 ...
build/
!**/src/main/**/build/
!**/src/test/**/build/

I believe this has something to do with maven's multi-module project feature, but Initializr apps are not multi-module (at start). That aside, what I'm reading here? If I took a stab at what I think is being stated it is something I do not want to do (as a general practice).

"Ignore target/ folders wherever encountered, but target folders below the top-level in some/path/src/main/deeper/still/target/ include those.

"Oh, do the same for NetBeans build/ directories!"

This doesn't quite make sense. Why would I ever commit target content generated by the build? Thus I'm trying to deduce the intent of the Spring engineers.

Update

In fact, that's exactly what this does, includes target or build directories deeper in the root. To what end?

mkdir -p some/path/src/main/deeper/still/target/
touch !$/test.txt

This new target directory is included for staging and commits. Remove this and it's ignored.

javafueled
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  • My use of `deeper/still` masked the intent as I also fixated on the use of `target` in the negated exclude statement. I probably would have discovered the intent had a used a more appropriate path, i.e., a package name pattern like `src/main/com/target/api`. I note this in my research below. – javafueled Oct 26 '20 at 15:49

1 Answers1

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Basically, these "includes" (negated excludes) make sure directories beneath src/main and src/test that may be named target, for example, a package name, are not missed in a commit.

Per a discussion on the Spring Initializr gitter, Andy Wilkinson, a Spring committer, noted:

It's to prevent the ignore for Maven's build output directory (target) from causing code in a package named target from being ignored.

In many cases, safely deleted in individual use cases, "unless you work for Target" (Target Brands, Inc. might have packages namespaced as com.target.api.*) (h/t to Andy for the example).

My question should have been answered in the use of src/main and src/test, but I let the misdirection of the word, target, confuse me. In fact, I was demonstrating this in my own example, but couldn't get past the word. D'oh!

javafueled
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