Re: [PATCH] Add git format-patch produced patches to .gitignore

> Michael J Gruber wrote:
> 
>> If you want to ignore format patch output, simply use .git/info/excludes
>> or a global excludes file, but please don't force everyone else to live
>> with that or work around it.
> 
> Side note: I said with similar intent that this allows developers to
> work “without interference”.  This was a poor choice of words on my
> part: a too-long .gitignore only prevents me from noticing and
> tracking files that others considered not worth tracking.
> 
> From the thread I faintly remembered and then linked to[1]: ;-)
> 
>   I earlier said that "*~" should not be in project-wide .gitignore
>   file because use of Emacs vs vi is a matter of personal taste, and
>   Emacs specific "*~" pattern does not belong to a project policy,
>   just like vim "*.swp" pattern doesn't.
> 
>   But I think that reasoning is flawed.  The right criteria should not
>   be about "use of Emacs vs vi", but about "do we in this project ever
>   want to track files that match *~ or *.swp as legitimate contents".
>   If a project expects not to have a tracked file whose name ends with
>   ".swp", even if it does _not_ mean to encourage use of vim over
>   Emacs or any other editor, I think it is fine to add such to its
>   tracked .gitignore file for its developer's benefit.

> 
> This does not change my conclusion: there are many other reasons to
> leave files produced outside the build process unlisted:
> 
>  . consistency: to keep the file intuitive and avoid a lot of
>    patch churn, it is nicest to choose one rule and stick to it
> 
>  . simplicity: shorter .gitignore.  Making the appropriate content
>    of .gitignore depend on the behavior of too many text editors
>    (and IDEs, and foreign VCSes, and debugging tools, and ...)
>    makes it hard to maintain.  See qt’s .gitignore for an example
>    of this.
> 
>  . correctness: for the case of format-patch, it is hard to say
>    "we will never want to track files that match ????-*.patch as
>    legitimate contents".  In fact, it is likely such files may need
>    to be added to the test suite.
> 
> And unlike .o files and company, it does not seem likely that
> formatted patches need to be kept around during development.
> 
> I hope that is a little clearer.  Sorry for the ramble.
> Jonathan