Why is ignore.conf not included in the repository by default?

[JackAidley]

I was surprised to see that the default ignore.conf file generated excludes ignore.conf itself. I cannot understand why this would be desirable since it could result in different users have different ignore lists and thus files one user wants ignored being picked up by another user (and vice-versa). Is there a good reason for this behaviour I'm missing? And will removing ignore.conf from the ignore list so it is included in the repository cause any problems?

[ollieblanks]

Hi Jack,

If the repository is created via the Version Control package in Unity, then a default ignore.conf should be added to your repository. If the repository is created in the Plastic SCM client, then a default ignore.conf file is not created, because the origin of the repository is unknown to us. You can, however, add an ignore.conf to a special repository called plastic-global-config, so that it can be shared across repos. More information about this can be found in the Administrators Guide.

Hope this helps!

[Wolfram]

If the default/global ignore.conf were to ignore itself, it would create the situation you described: any local ignore.conf's would no longer be "visible" to Plastic, so they would never be checked in, and each user could have his own, unsynced ignore.conf as a result.

That's why the default ignore.conf EXCLUDES ignore.conf (=has that line preceded with a "!") from being ignored, so local ignore.conf's remain visible to Plastic, and can be committed, which is what you want.