Re: Keep directory in working tree, but exclude from foo.diff.gz

[Ben Finney <bignose+hates-spam@benfinney.id.au>]

Felipe Sateler <fsateler@gmail.com> writes:

> Ben Finney wrote:
>  
> > What would be the best way to keep such a directory in place, but
> > exclude the directory from the Debian source and binary packages?
> 
> dpkg-source -i"regexp"?

Thanks. That looks like the right functionality, indeed.

However:

=====
$ man dpkg-source
[...]
       -i[regexp]
              You may specify a perl regular expression to match files
              you want filtered out of the list of files for the diff.
              [...] There can only be one active regexp, of multiple
              -i options only the last one will take effect.
[...]

$ dpkg-source --help
[...]
  -i[<regexp>]             filter out files to ignore diffs of
                             (defaults to: '(?:^|/).*~$|(?:^|/)\.#.*$|(?:^|/)\..*\.swp$|(?:^|/),,.*(?:$|/.*$)|(?:^|/)(?:DEADJOE|\.cvsignore|\.arch-inventory|\.bzrignore|\.gitignore)$|(?:^|/)(?:CVS|RCS|\.deps|\{arch\}|\.arch-ids|\.svn|\.hg|_darcs|\.git|\.shelf|_MTN|\.bzr(?:\.backup|tags)?)(?:$|/.*$)').
[...]
=====

Yikes. So, in order to filter out an additional pattern, I can't just
say "ignore this pattern as well as the defaults". I have to construct
a *single* regexp that contains the default pattern *plus* mine, and
forever diverge from any future changes to the default regexp.

Am I reading it wrong, or is this dpkg-source option really that
awful?

-- 
 \     "First they came for the verbs, and I said nothing, for verbing |
  `\    weirds language. Then, they arrival for the nouns and I speech |
_o__)                        nothing, for I no verbs."  -- Peter Ellis |
Ben Finney