Thank you very much for your feedback. This topic definitely needs some clarification.

• Where is the list of files like... that are normally respected? (The wording makes me wonder if there are other files ending in ignore which are usually looked at)

There are six sources for ignore patterns:

1. .gitignore files
2. .git/info/exclude files (these are like user-specific .gitignore files that are not shared with the rest of the world)
3. The global gitignore configuration (core.excludesFile git setting, defaults to $HOME/.config/git/ignore)
4. .ignore files (things you would like to ignore across tools like fd, ripgrep, ag, etc. that are not part of your .gitignore)
5. .fdignore files (things you would only like to be ignored by fd)
6. Manually added ignore patterns via --exclude <pattern> or --ignore-file <path> (things you would only like to be ignored in this specific run of fd)

The --no-ignore option switches off 1-5.
The --no-ignore-vcs option switches off 1-3.

2. Is -I a strict superset of --no-ignore-vcs?

Yes.

Sources:

• https://docs.rs/ignore/0.4.4/ignore/struct.WalkBuilder.html#ignore-rules
• https://git-scm.com/docs/gitignore

I am not sure how common of a use case it is, but personally I would like the ability to turn on 1. and turn off 2.. (I want to respect my projects .gitignore, but I have my own scratchpad type files I would like to index, but never commit).

Is this possible with the current API? Is there something like an --include that I am missing?

I found the --no-ignore flag, but it "no ignores" everything, it would be cool to be able to specify certain paths to --no-ignore like you can with the --ignore-path flag.

BTW: Thanks for the awesome tool!!! 😁

Not a perfect solution. But as a workaround, you could use an ignore file (either .fdignore or with --ignore-path) that explicitly includes your scratchpad files.

@tmccombs oooh this actually works well for my use case. fd --no-ignore --ignore-file=.gitignore Thanks for the help! 👍