Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add "--only-untracked" flag to status commands.

From: Väinö Järvelä <v@pp.inet.fi>
Date: Aug 25, 2007, 06:16 UTC
Message-ID: <1529CBA9-860C-464D-AC78-BF75D0196894@pp.inet.fi>
In-Reply-To: <7v7inkcz2o.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Aug 25, 2007, at 02:06, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>
>>> I think the latter is more important point.  If you train a
>>> naive user to use --only-tracked to ignore "Untracked" list, you
>>> are doing him or her a great disservice.  Mistake to forget "git
>>> add" a new file before commiting will bound to happen.
>>
>> If it won't acquire short version, nor tab completion, mosts users  
>> when
>> confronted with such a mothful of option-name wouldn't use it unless
>> necessary, I think...
>
> Yeah, but if we accept that --only-tracked patch, I know from
> the past experience that people would send a "shorter synonym"
> patch, arguing that the capability is already there.
>
> I really think we should resist temptation to add misfeatures
> that would encourage bad workflows and new user mistakes.

I really do think that there is a use case for this patch. But this assumes that the testing is done in the source tree, but maybe that in itself can be considered a bad workflow.

An example would be in game development, where I have a directory full of images, and I wish to try out different images in the place of one. I usually create different versions of the images with different names, filling up the image directory under VCS. This usually results in tens of images that will not be tracked (unless they replace the original images), but because of my bad habit of creating the files inside the source tree, which results in a little bit faster workflow for me. With all these untracked files, git- status will obscure the actual contents of the status I wish to see.

I cannot put those files inside .gitignore, as there would have to be some kind of exclusion pattern for them that won't match the tracked files. Sure I could prefix all of my test images with 'test_' or something similiar. Or I could just add '*' to .gitignore, and force adds. The latter seems like a bad habit for me, the other seems to include a lot of manual labor, especially when someone else sends test files for me.

So the end result for me is, that it's easier to use --only-tracked

Fringe case? Maybe. Workflow could be better, sure. But --only- tracked even works for the less technical folk, which might be scared of forcing the changes, or annoyed by having to name the files with a magic prefix.

-- Väinö