ignore-from-file should use path of .yamllint.yaml as base, not current working dir

[jellehelsen]

If there is a .yamllint.yaml at the base of the git repo, with ignore-from-file pointing to .gitignore, yamllint stops working in subdirectories. It will pickup the .yamllint.yaml file in a higher level directory, but then tries to find .gitignore in the current folder. This causes it to fail with FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '.gitignore' .

Making this extra annoying is that editor plugins like flycheck, that use yamllint, tend to use the directory where the file is located as the working dir. So having ignore-from-file in your project level .yamllint.yaml breaks in-editor linting.

[adrienverge]

Hello and thanks for the report.

Yamllint doesn't handle Git repos differently than regular directories: if ignore-from-file points to a relative file, it will be searched from the current working directory. Looking for the ignore file in special locations (e.g. looking for a Git repo root in parent directories) would change current behavior and might annoy some users.

I suggest configuring flycheck to work like most Unix tools (if possible of course). Or maybe use an absolute path in ignore-from-file?

[jellehelsen]

It's not really git related. Imho it does not make sense use the .yamllint.yaml that is in a parent directory and then fail because it can't find the ignore-from-file that is in that same folder.
Either don't use the .yamllint.yaml from a parent directory, or also find the files the .yamllint.yaml points to with a relative path. In the latter case the relative path should be relative to the .yamllint.yaml that is pointing to it.
In the current implementation, yamllint breaks when you go into a child folder.

[adrienverge]

Hello Jelle, and sorry about the delay.

So the idea is that any file referenced by yamllint config would be relative to its own path.
But what about when this config is passed in another manner, e.g. via an environment variable (yamllint -d …)? It would then be relative to the current working directory?

@ndrwnaguib what do you think? (you contributed ignore-from-file in #363 and #591)

[jellehelsen]

When there is no config file, the original behavior remains. Since there is no file to calculate a relative path to, the path gets used as is, making it relative to the current working directory.