Support "**" wildcard in .gitignore and .gitattributes

Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 19 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/gitignore.txt b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
index 2e7328b830..d4747cee41 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitignore.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitignore.txt
@@ -96,6 +96,25 @@ PATTERN FORMAT
    For example, "/{asterisk}.c" matches "cat-file.c" but not
    "mozilla-sha1/sha1.c".
 
+Two consecutive asterisks ("`**`") in patterns matched against
+full pathname may have special meaning:
+
+ - A leading "`**`" followed by a slash means match in all
+   directories. For example, "`**/foo`" matches file or directory
+   "`foo`" anywhere, the same as pattern "`foo`". "**/foo/bar"
+   matches file or directory "`bar`" anywhere that is directly
+   under directory "`foo`".
+
+ - A trailing "/**" matches everything inside. For example,
+   "abc/**" matches all files inside directory "abc", relative
+   to the location of the `.gitignore` file, with infinite depth.
+
+ - A slash followed by two consecutive asterisks then a slash
+   matches zero or more directories. For example, "`a/**/b`"
+   matches "`a/b`", "`a/x/b`", "`a/x/y/b`" and so on.
+
+ - Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.
+
 NOTES
 -----