git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

[PATCH] rm: add --intent-to-add, to be used with --cached

From
Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Date
Jun 22, 2019, 12:24 UTC
Message-ID
<20190622122417.28178-1-pclouds@gmail.com>

An index entry serves two purposes: to keep the content to be committed, and to mark that the same path on worktree is tracked. When

    git rm --cached foo

is called and there is "foo" in worktree, its status is changed from tracked to untracked. Which I think is not intended, at least from the user perspective because we almost always tell people "Git is about the content" (*).

Add --intent-to-add, which will replace the current index entry with an intent-to-add one. "git commit -m gone" will record "foo" gone, while "git commit -am not-gone" will ignore the index as usual and keep "foo". Before this, "commit -am" will also remove "foo".

While I think --intent-to-add (and also the one in git-reset) should be the default behavior, changing it flip the test suite out because it relies on the current behavior. Let's leave that for later. At least having the ability to just remove the staged content is the right thing to do.

(*) From the developer perspective, keeping the tool dumb actually
    sounds good. When you tell git to remove something from the index,
    it should go do just that, no trying to be clever. But that's more
    suitable for plumbing commands like update-index than rm, in my
    opinion.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
---
 This occurred to me while adding intent-to-add support to git-restore.
 It's not related to nd/switch-and-restore though and I originally
 wanted to make it default, so I post it separately here.
 Documentation/git-rm.txt |  6 ++++++
 builtin/rm.c             | 10 ++++++++--
 t/t3600-rm.sh            |  9 +++++++++
 3 files changed, 23 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/Documentation/git-rm.txt b/Documentation/git-rm.txt
index b5c46223c4..aa0aa6063f 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-rm.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-rm.txt
@@ -60,6 +60,12 @@ OPTIONS
 	Working tree files, whether modified or not, will be
 	left alone.
 
+--intent-to-add::
+--no-intent-to-add::
+	When `--cached` is used, if the given path also exist as a
+	working tree file, the index is updated to record the fact
+	that the path will be added later, similar to `git add -N`.
+
 --ignore-unmatch::
 	Exit with a zero status even if no files matched.
 
diff --git a/builtin/rm.c b/builtin/rm.c
index be8edc6d1e..135bc4b76e 100644
--- a/builtin/rm.c
+++ b/builtin/rm.c
@@ -235,12 +235,14 @@ static int check_local_mod(struct object_id *head, int index_only)
 }
 
 static int show_only = 0, force = 0, index_only = 0, recursive = 0, quiet = 0;
-static int ignore_unmatch = 0;
+static int ignore_unmatch = 0, intent_to_add = 0;
 
 static struct option builtin_rm_options[] = {
 	OPT__DRY_RUN(&show_only, N_("dry run")),
 	OPT__QUIET(&quiet, N_("do not list removed files")),
 	OPT_BOOL( 0 , "cached",         &index_only, N_("only remove from the index")),
+	OPT_BOOL( 0 , "intent-to-add",  &intent_to_add,
+		  N_("record that the path will be added later if needed")),
 	OPT__FORCE(&force, N_("override the up-to-date check"), PARSE_OPT_NOCOMPLETE),
 	OPT_BOOL('r', NULL,             &recursive,  N_("allow recursive removal")),
 	OPT_BOOL( 0 , "ignore-unmatch", &ignore_unmatch,
@@ -262,7 +264,7 @@ int cmd_rm(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 	if (!argc)
 		usage_with_options(builtin_rm_usage, builtin_rm_options);
 
-	if (!index_only)
+	if (!index_only || intent_to_add)
 		setup_work_tree();
 
 	hold_locked_index(&lock_file, LOCK_DIE_ON_ERROR);
@@ -344,6 +346,10 @@ int cmd_rm(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
 
 		if (remove_file_from_cache(path))
 			die(_("git rm: unable to remove %s"), path);
+
+		if (index_only && intent_to_add && file_exists(path) &&
+		    add_file_to_index(the_repository->index, path, ADD_CACHE_INTENT))
+			error(_("failed to mark '%s' as intent-to-add"), path);
 	}
 
 	if (show_only)
diff --git a/t/t3600-rm.sh b/t/t3600-rm.sh
index 85ae7dc1e4..04233b7dc4 100755
--- a/t/t3600-rm.sh
+++ b/t/t3600-rm.sh
@@ -34,6 +34,15 @@ test_expect_success 'Test that git rm foo succeeds' '
 	git rm --cached foo
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'Test that git rm --cached --intent-to-add foo succeeds' '
+	echo content >foo &&
+	git add foo &&
+	git rm --cached --intent-to-add foo &&
+	git diff --summary -- foo >actual &&
+	echo " create mode 100644 foo" >expected &&
+	test_cmp expected actual
+'
+
 test_expect_success 'Test that git rm --cached foo succeeds if the index matches the file' '
 	echo content >foo &&
 	git add foo &&
-- 
2.22.0.rc0.322.g2b0371e29a
Next: Johannes Schindelin
Message 1 of 3 in “rm: add --intent-to-add, to be used with --cached”
  1. rm: add --intent-to-add, to be used with --cachedNguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy, Jun 22, 2019
  2. Johannes SchindelinJun 24, 2019
  3. Duy NguyenJun 24, 2019

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

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.