Default ignore paths?

[lonix1]

For the vscode extension:

We can easily tell which paths are ignored by default, by looking at the default JSON settings:

  "cSpell.ignorePaths": [
    "package-lock.json",
    "node_modules",
    "vscode-extension",
    ".git/{info,lfs,logs,refs,objects}/**",
    ".git/{index,*refs,*HEAD}",
    ".vscode",
    ".vscode-insiders"
  ],

For the cli tool:

I can't determine what to use for ignorePaths? Does the cli already define defaults, or am I supposed to do so?

[daveshenal]

Hii lonix1,

Yes, the CLI already defines defaults. You dont need to specify ignorePaths manually unless you want to add to or override them.

The base defaults are shared with the VS Code extension via the same core library, so they are largely the same (except the editor specific paths like .vscode and .vscode-insiders which only make sense in the extension context).

To see the exact defaults for your specific version, check the DefaultSettings.ts file directly. That is the source of truth for both CLI and extension.

If you want to add custom ignorePaths, add them to cspell.json in your project root:

{
  "ignorePaths": [
    "dist",
    "coverage"
  ]
}

Both the CLI and VS Code extension will pick this up and merge it on top of the defaults so you don't need to re list the defaults.

[lonix1]

Thanks. I don't think that file defines the default ignore paths though... Maybe they're defined elsewhere.

[daveshenal]

Hey, sorry for the confusion in my earlier reply... I was wrong about the CLI having defaults.

I dug into the source and tested it directly. Here's where things landed:

ignorePaths itself defaults to an empty array. The bundled default config has ignorePaths: []:

cspell/packages/cspell-bundled-dicts/cspell-default.config.ts

Line 12 in 492ee87

ignorePaths: [],

Confirmed this in the actual published npm package too, not just the repo source.

But that doesn't mean nothing is excluded by default. There's a separate, hardcoded default exclude glob for node_modules, defined here:

cspell/packages/cspell/src/util/glob.ts

Line 26 in 492ee87

const defaultExcludeGlobs = ['node_modules/**'];

This is completely independent of the ignorePaths setting. I verified it behaviorally too. Installed cspell fresh with zero config, put a misspelled file inside node_modules/, and it was silently skipped while identical files outside node_modules got flagged.

So to summarize: ignorePaths is empty by default in the CLI, but node_modules is still skipped via this separate exclude-glob mechanism. Anything else (.git, dist, .vscode, etc.) needs to be added explicitly via ignorePaths in the cspell.json.

Thanks for the pushback.. made me actually verify instead of assume.

[lonix1]

Wow, thank you for that comprehensive investigation!

That node_modules is ignored by default is good news, but I think most people will also expect .git (for example) to be ignored. So this info should be in the docs, to alert users that they must take responsibility for the ignorePaths setting.

@Jason3S What do you think? Maybe a small note for ignorepaths would help people improve perf (especially in ci) by skipping .git/ and other things. Or maybe, to keep it simple, that section could simply note there is no default value (so the user must be explicit).

[lonix1]

@Jason3S Maybe

cspell/packages/cspell/src/util/glob.ts

Line 26 in 492ee87

const defaultExcludeGlobs = ['node_modules/**'];

should be

const defaultExcludeGlobs = [
  '.git/',
  'node_modules/',
  'package-lock.json',
  'pnpm-lock.yaml',
];

?

[lonix1]

Moved to issue #8937