On Sun, Dec 08, 2013 at 01:58:31PM -0800, r-gaia-cs wrote:
> > +/data/
> 
> Novices can thought that `/data/` in `gitignore` is the same as
> `/data` in the filesystem.

Personally, I usually just use the bare directory name.  I don't
expect other files or directories to share the same name (only one
`build`, `data`, … per repository).  The `/data/` line explicitly
matches only directories (trailing slash) in the .gitignore directory
(leading slash).  For novice students, I'd just stick with `data` (or
whatever) and point them at gitignore(5) for more details [1].

I think more linking to external docs would help all of our lessons.
I usually link to the relevant docs wherever possible when I introduce
a new command, argument, file format, ….  Citing sources is general
scientific best practice, and for software it helps future proof your
content (because the upstream authors are likely to update their docs
when they make changes).  For us, maybe we should be citing the
glossary, which in turn cites upstream docs?  I'm not sure which terms
should be routed through a local glossary, and which should point
directly upstream.

[1]: https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/gitignore.html