Git - what is causing “warning: Negative patterns are ignored in git attributes”

Question

When pushing on my server the post-receive hook runs a simple git clone command.

The command returns the following warning and I don't know what it means or how to resolve it. Googling the error gave only results concerning gitattributes and I haven't configured any attributes. My .gitignore file also has no exclamation marks or negative values inside.

remote: Cloning into '/var/www/html/gitrep'...        
remote: warning: Negative patterns are ignored in git attributes
remote: Use '\!' for literal leading exclamation.

Answer 1

Do not mix gitignore and gitattributes.

One of your gitattributes file use a negative pattern that is not allowed.
Search for one of those files:

• .gitattributes inside any folder of your repository
• $GIT_DIR/info/attributes
• $(git config --get core.attributesFile)
• $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/git/attributes
• $HOME/.config/git/attributes
• $(prefix)/etc/gitattributes

One of them use a negative pattern. You just need to fix it (by adapting your gitattributes model or escaping the exclamation point)