From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 05:44:14 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 2/3] doc: dissuade users from trying to ignore tracked files
Message-ID: <20191017054414.GB10253@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20191017005330.9021-3-sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>

On Thu, Oct 17, 2019 at 12:53:29AM +0000, brian m. carlson wrote:

> There is no sensible behavior in this case, because sometimes the data
> is precious, such as certain configuration files, and sometimes it is
> irrelevant data that the user would be happy to discard.
> 
> Since this is not a supported configuration and users are prone to
> misuse the existing features for unintended purposes, causing general
> sadness and confusion, let's document the existing behavior and the
> pitfalls in the documentation for git update-index so that users know
> they should explore alternate solutions.

I think this is an improvement. It would be nice if we had some specific
alternatives to point them to. But as you note, Git doesn't really have
a good solution for this built-in. And I don't know offhand of a
complete one that we could recommend. So this is probably the best we
can do for now.

-Peff