From: Steven Grimm <koreth@midwinter.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Apr 2007 08:12:30 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] Add --ignore-notfound option to exit with zero status when no files are removed.
Message-ID: <46232FEE.9010907@midwinter.com>
In-Reply-To: <20070416075324.GA18961@midwinter.com>

Steven Grimm wrote:
> This allows "git rm -r --ignore-notfound" to be used as an index filter
> with cg-admin-rewritehist. The documentation for that command recommends
> using git-update-index --remove to filter files out of a tree's history,
> but that doesn't support recursive deletion like git-rm does, making it
> less convenient to filter directories from history.
>   

Having said that, in some sense the problem here is arguably with 
cg-admin-rewritehist bailing out when a filter command exits with a 
nonzero status; given that git-rm is likely to be a common filter people 
will want to use, ideally cg-admin-rewritehist should do the right thing 
with git-rm's normal exit codes. But it appears Cogito is not being 
actively maintained any more (correct me if I'm wrong; the latest stable 
release is half a year old at this point, while git has changed 
substantially since then) so it didn't seem too worthwhile to try to 
patch things from that side.

I think it makes sense to be able to optionally treat a lack of matches 
as a non-error condition like "rm -f" does, so I'm comfortable 
submitting this patch regardless.

On a related note, last time I asked a question that caused someone to 
point me to cg-admin-rewritehist, Linus said he'd like to see its 
functionality folded into git proper. I have to agree with that idea; 
there are some obvious enhancements that program could use, and it'll be 
easier to do that if it's part of an actively maintained code base.

-Steve