From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2008 18:17:33 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH,RFC] Implement 'git rm --if-missing'
Message-ID: <32541b130807161117h54e97825o9119655f73138341@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20080716180617.GO32184@machine.or.cz>

On 7/16/08, Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz> wrote:
>  On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 07:00:50PM +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
>  > git rm --if-missing will only remove files if they've already been removed from
>  > disk.
>  >
>  > Signed-off-by: Ciaran McCreesh <ciaran.mccreesh@googlemail.com>
>
>   what is the usage scenario? The porcelain options space is a precious
>  resource, so please explain why do you need this and who is going to use
>  it (especially with such a long name).

I see the idea here: right now you can do:

         touch a b c
         git add .

And have it auto-add all the new files, so "git commit" will work.
But there is no equivalent for rm, because for obvious reasons,

        rm b c
        git rm .

Doesn't do the same thing.  And "git add ." doesn't auto-recognize
deletions, which probably also makes sense.

"git commit -a", on the other hand, will automatically commit all
deletions for you.  But you don't always want to commit *all* your
changes just because you want to commit all your deletions.

That said, --if-missing is a bit unwieldy.  I don't have a better
suggestion though.

Have fun,

Avery