.treeignore

profiles

3 min read

Profiles

Project Name: .treeignore
Project Manager: @ciroalo
Last Revision Date: April 3, 2026
Version: 0.1
Status: Stable (MVP subset)

This document describes the profile system in .treeignore

What are Profiles?

Profiles let you define multiple filtered views of the same project tree. Each profile specifies additional exclusion patterns that apply on top of global exclusions when that profile is active.

This is useful when different or contexts need different views of the same project, for example, a documentation view that hides test files, or a public view that hides internal tooling.

Defining Profiles

A profile is a variable assignment in .treeignore whose name starts with tree:

tree_docs = [
    "tests/",
    ".github/",
    "benches/"
]

tree_public = [
    "internal/",
    ".env",
    "scripts/"
]

Each quoted string in the list is an exclusion pattern. These patterns follow the same matching rules as global exclusions (see matching.md)

Profile Naming

  • Profile names must start with tree (e.g. tree_docs, tree_api, tree_minimal)

  • Names are case-insensitive and normalized to lowercase internally.

  • tree_docs, Tree_docs, and TREE_DOCS all refer to the same profile

How Exclusions Combine

When a profile is active, its exclusion patterns are applied in addition to global exclusions. They do not replace them.

# Global exclusions — always applied
node_modules/
dist/
.git/

# Profile exclusions — added when tree_docs is active
tree_docs = [
    "tests/",
    "benches/"
]

Effective exclusions for the general tree:

node_modules/
dist/
.git/

Effective exclusions for tree_docs:

node_modules/
dist/
.git/
tests/
benches/

Execution Modes

Default Execution (No --profile flag)

tree-it

Generates all trees:

  1. The general tree - applying only global exclusions

  2. One tree for each defined profile - applying global + profile exclusions

Output labels each tree:

[general]
project/
├── src/
├── tests/
└── Cargo.toml

[tree_docs]
project/
├── src/
└── Cargo.toml

Single Profile Execution

tree-it --profile tree_docs

Generates only the selected profile’s tree. The general tree and other profiles are not included in the output.

Error Handling

Missing Profile

If the requested profile does not exist in .treeignore:

tree-it --profile tree_nonexistent

tree-it prints an error and exits with a non-zero status code.

Profile Without .treeignore

The --profile flag requires .treeignore to exist. If .treeignore is not found:

tree-it --profile tree_docs
# Error: .treeignore not found

This applies even if .gitignore exists — profiles are a .treeignore-only feature.

Only One Profile at a Time

Only a single profile may be selected per execution. Passing multiple --profile flags is not supported in the MVP.

Profile Tags

Profiles may have associated tags that override or extend global tags when the profile is active. Profile tag variables follow the naming convention <profile_name>_tags:

tree_docs_tags = [
    "--level=2"
]

See tags.md for details.

Note: Tags are parsed in the current MVP but not yet applied