Documentation: clarify use of .git{ignore,attributes} versus .git/info/*

gitignore patterns can be read from three different
files, while gitattributes can come from two files. Let's
provide some hints to the user about the differences and how
they are typically used.

Suggested by Toby Corkindale, but gratuitously reworded by Jeff King.

Signed-off-by: Toby Corkindale <toby.corkindale@rea-group.com>
Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
index 35a29fd60..970db0c73 100644
--- a/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
+++ b/Documentation/gitattributes.txt
@@ -63,6 +63,13 @@ path in question, and its parent directories (the further the
 directory that contains `.gitattributes` is from the path in
 question, the lower its precedence).
 
+If you wish to affect only a single repository (i.e., to assign
+attributes to files that are particular to one user's workflow), then
+attributes should be placed in the `$GIT_DIR/info/attributes` file.
+Attributes which should be version-controlled and distributed to other
+repositories (i.e., attributes of interest to all users) should go into
+`.gitattributes` files.
+
 Sometimes you would need to override an setting of an attribute
 for a path to `unspecified` state.  This can be done by listing
 the name of the attribute prefixed with an exclamation point `!`.