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Re: dotfile support

From
ZBZack Brown <zbrown@tumblerings.org>
Date
Dec 7, 2005, 14:56 UTC
Message-ID
<20051207145646.GA9207@tumblerings.org>
In-Reply-To
<42628D1B.3000207@dwheeler.com>
Hi,

What's the status of dotfile support? I can only find one thread that really discusses the issue:

On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 12:21:47PM -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote:
Show 14 quoted lines
> Linus Torvalds wrote:
> >
> >On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> >
> ...
> >Also, I made a design decision that git only cares about non-dotfiles. Git 
> >literally never sees or looks at _anything_ that starts with a ".". I 
> >think that's absolutely the right thing to do for an SCM (if you hide your 
> >files, I really don't think you should expect the SCM to see it), but it's 
> >obviously not the right thing for a backup thing.
> 
> Again, a command line flag or config file entry could change that
> in the future, if desired.  So this is a decision that could be
> changed later... the best kind of decision :-).

Personally I like dotfile support, and I compare it to the language encoding issue for filenames. Linus says we should treat filenames as binary data, and thus it won't matter what characters someone uses. I agree completely, but by not supporting dotfiles, we're creating a big exception, in that if a filename begins with a dot, we treat it in a much different way, in fact we ignore it completely.

In the above quote, Linus says "if you hide your files, I really don't think you should expect the SCM to see it". But what about the case where the user is not the one choosing to create dotfiles? If I want to put a bunch of config files for various apps into a git repository, I don't get to pick their names in many cases, at least not without changing the way I invoke my apps (or the scripts that do it for me). But it's still worthwhile to have those config files in version control. It makes it much easier to experiment with new tools, recover from my mistakes, and share my successes with others.

So that's my pitch: Leaving out dotfile support seems like it creates an unnecessary limitation that eliminates some valid uses of git.

Be well, Zack

Show 6 quoted lines
> 
> --- David A. Wheeler
> -
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-- 
Zack Brown
Previous: Morten WelinderNext: Andreas Ericsson
Message 17 of 25 in “Storing permissions”
  1. Martin MaresApr 16, 2005
  2. Paul JacksonApr 16, 2005
  3. Junio C HamanoApr 16, 2005
  4. Paul JacksonApr 17, 2005
  5. David A. WheelerApr 17, 2005
  6. Morten WelinderApr 17, 2005
  7. Paul JacksonApr 17, 2005
  8. Linus TorvaldsApr 17, 2005
  9. Paul JacksonApr 17, 2005
  10. Linus TorvaldsApr 17, 2005
  11. David A. WheelerApr 17, 2005
  12. Paul JacksonApr 17, 2005
  13. Daniel BarkalowApr 17, 2005
  14. Linus TorvaldsApr 17, 2005
  15. David A. WheelerApr 17, 2005
  16. Symlinks [was Re: Storing permissions]Morten Welinder, Apr 17, 2005
  17. Zack BrownDec 7, 2005
  18. Andreas EricssonDec 7, 2005
  19. Zack BrownDec 7, 2005
  20. Petr BaudisDec 7, 2005
  21. Johannes SchindelinDec 7, 2005
  22. Junio C HamanoDec 7, 2005
  23. Zack BrownDec 7, 2005
  24. Junio C HamanoDec 7, 2005
  25. H. Peter AnvinDec 8, 2005

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

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