gitignore interpretation differs between ripgrep and Git

[kpine]

I encountered an odd gitignore pattern that produced confusing (to me) results. The project in question has !*/ among other patterns (don't ask me why). This causes ripgrep to search the .git directory, but Git still ignores it. Should ripgrep interpret the .gitignore file the same as Git, or is this result expected?

Here's a reproduction:

❯ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test/.git/

❯ echo '!*/' > .gitignore

❯ git add .gitignore

❯ git commit -m 'Add .gitignore'
[main (root-commit) 8a7ab23] Add .gitignore
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 .gitignore

❯ touch .git/foo

❯ touch bar

❯ git status --short
?? bar

❯ rg --files
bar
.git/foo
.git/MERGE_RR
.git/logs/refs/heads/main
.git/logs/HEAD
.git/COMMIT_EDITMSG
.git/index
.git/objects/8a/7ab236b5afedea2a9351e18462d2856fa1c093
.git/objects/12/205745ebfad629068edb2cbf7058d06e4e6c53
.git/objects/c0/ff3025c379cfe7d5b27a4f6340226c50d03448
.git/HEAD
.git/refs/heads/main
.git/config
.git/info/exclude
.git/hooks/update.sample
.git/hooks/sendemail-validate.sample
.git/hooks/push-to-checkout.sample
.git/hooks/prepare-commit-msg.sample
.git/hooks/pre-receive.sample
.git/hooks/pre-rebase.sample
.git/hooks/pre-push.sample
.git/hooks/pre-merge-commit.sample
.git/hooks/pre-commit.sample
.git/hooks/pre-applypatch.sample
.git/hooks/post-update.sample
.git/hooks/fsmonitor-watchman.sample
.git/hooks/commit-msg.sample
.git/hooks/applypatch-msg.sample
.git/description

❯ rg --files --debug 2>&1 > /dev/null | grep '\.git:'
rg: DEBUG|ignore::walk|crates/ignore/src/walk.rs:1802: whitelisting ./.git: Whitelist(IgnoreMatch(Gitignore(Glob { from: Some("./.gitignore"), original: "!*/", actual: "**/*", is_whitelist: true, is_only_dir: true })))

❯ rg --version
ripgrep 14.1.0

features:-simd-accel,+pcre2
simd(compile):+SSE2,-SSSE3,-AVX2
simd(runtime):+SSE2,+SSSE3,+AVX2

PCRE2 10.42 is available (JIT is available)

[BurntSushi]

It's expected. Add .git to .rgignore to ignore it.

ripgrep just respects your gitignore as they are written. git on the other hand uses repository state to list tracked files. This ultimately produce different results, especially when files that are gitignored are checked into the repository. This is expected and there are no plans to change that.