minimatch('tmp/public/app/css/main.css', 'tmp/*')

[kof]

resolves as false .... I suppose this should result true

[isaacs]

* doesn't ever match /.

Try tmp/**.

[isaacs]

Same as bash:

$ mkdir -p tmp/foo/bar

$ echo tmp/*
tmp/foo

$ echo tmp/**
tmp/ tmp/foo tmp/foo/bar

[kof]

hmmm, why is then .gitignore working using 'tmp/*' or even 'tmp' ?

[isaacs]

Because when you .gitignore a folder, it doesn't even bother to traverse it at all.

You cannot get the .gitignore-style behavior by making a list of every file and then glob-matching each one. For starters, that's ludicrously expensive (you may have a .gitignore'd folder with 100000 files in it or something), and also, you have to keep track of whether the parent was ignored. However, it gets more complicated, because a rule might cause you to have to look for specific items, if they're un-ignored with a negated rule.

I wrote fstream-ignorefile specifically for this use case. If you find a situation where it fails to include/exclude a file that git would, then please let me know.

[kof]

Thanks, I will propose this to nodejitsu/forever guys, they are just using minimatch and caused a lot of pain for me today :)