@rough-minister-58256: on your other comment in https://rbcommons.com/s/twitter/r/3927/ "1) should this actually be /dist/ or does the trailing slash not matter? e.g. would that not also exclude ./dist itself (and ./fruit in your test)?” does the existing test answer this?

def test_ignore_pattern_leading_slash(self):
    self._project_tree = self.mk_project_tree(self.root_dir, ['/apple'])
    files_list = self._walk_tree()

    self.assertEquals(self._all_files - {'apple'}, set(files_list))