title: How do Git SVN ignore-paths work (ignoring daily build tags)?
body: <p>I am trying clone an svn repository using git svn.  The repository has daily builds tagged which I want to ignore.  I am trying to use the "ignore-paths" option to do that, but I am still getting the daily build tags as branches in my repository.</p>
  
  <p>A very recent and similar (but so far unanswered) question is here:
  <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6915418/how-to-git-svn-fetch-only-branches-tags-with-certain-patterns">How to git svn fetch only branches/tags with certain patterns?</a></p>
  
  <h3>Repository Layout - <a href="https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice</a></h3>
  
  <p>General Repository Structure</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>branches
  
  <ul>
  <li>Branch 1</li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>Ignore Directory 1</li>
  <li>Ignore Directory 1</li>
  <li>tags
  
  <ul>
  <li>Tag 1</li>
  <li>Tag 2</li>
  <li>old
  
  <ul>
  <li>Old Tag 1</li>
  <li>Old Tag 2</li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>builds
  
  <ul>
  <li>Daily build 1</li>
  <li>Daily build 2</li>
  </ul></li>
  </ul></li>
  <li>trunk</li>
  </ul>
  
  <h3>What I have Tried</h3>
  
  <p>I am not that great at regular expressions, and they might be wrong, but here is what I've tried:</p>
  
  <p>This was just a modified version of something I found in the git svn documentation:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git svn clone -r15709:HEAD --prefix=svn/ --stdlayout --no-follow-parent --ignore-paths="^[^/]+/(?:tags/builds|tags/old|branches)" https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This was me trying to simplify:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git svn clone -r15709:HEAD --prefix=svn/ --stdlayout --no-follow-parent --ignore-paths="(old|builds)" https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice rice-full
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Desperation... (and adding some other paths I didn't need)</p>
  
  <pre><code>git svn clone -r15711:HEAD --prefix=svn/ --stdlayout --ignore-paths="^[^/]+/(?:builds|old)|inactive|rice-functional-tests|sandbox|tools" https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Then I switched to a more recent revision so it would finish sooner and tried ignoring all branches and tags for a test. This one seemed not to get any branches and tags, but it also never finished.  It seemed to freeze (at least, it ran longer than I thought it should have for only getting a day or two of history):</p>
  
  <pre><code>git svn clone -r21846:HEAD --prefix=svn/ --stdlayout --ignore-paths="^tags*|^branches*" https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The last one I tried was:</p>
  
  <pre><code>git svn clone -r15711:HEAD --prefix=svn/ --stdlayout --ignore-paths="^tags/old*|^tags/builds*|^inactive*|^rice-functional-tests*|^sandbox*|^tools*" https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice
  </code></pre>
  
  <h3>General Thoughts and Questions</h3>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>I'm not sure exactly what the ignore-paths regular expression is matching against.  Is it the relative path of the svn repository (tags/builds/Daily build 1)? Is it evaluated for each file in the project (tags/builds/Daily build 1/file 1, tags/builds/Daily build 1/file 2) or just at the branch/tag level (tags/builds/Daily build 1)? Does it include the repository base url (<a href="https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice/tags/builds/Daily" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://test.kuali.org/svn/rice/tags/builds/Daily</a> build 1)?</p></li>
  <li><p>Is there something I should be doing other than --stdlayout (specifying a regular expression for the tags that would get what I want)?</p></li>
  <li><p>I am only interested in trunk and certain release tags.  Is there a better way to get those?  I have tried cloning with only trunk, then adding a "fetch=" in the config to add only the tags I care about, then fetch the revision those were tagged from, but when I look at the result in git gui (visualize all branches) the two tags show up as floating with a single commit (not tied to trunk or each other).</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Not sure if it is relavant, but I am using msysgit (git version 1.7.3.1.msysgit.0) on a windows 7 64 bit machine.</p>
  
  <p>Long question, I know... I just wanted to be thorough.</p>