Re: git refuses to switch to older branches

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Aug 19, 2006, 22:41 UTC
Message-ID: <7v3bbs1h8c.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <ec80sl$i25$2@sea.gmane.org>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> writes:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Martin Waitz wrote:
>
>> now that gitweb.cgi is autogenerated, git refuses to switch to old
>> branches unless force is applied:
>> 
>>       fatal: Untracked working tree file 'gitweb/gitweb.cgi' would
>>       be overwritten by merge.
>> 
>> This safety measure is quite useful normally, but for files that are
>> explicitly marked as to-be-ignored it should not be neccessary.
>> 
>> But all the code that handles .gitignore is only used by ls-files now.
>> Does it make sense to add exclude handling to unpack-trees.c, too?
>
> I think it is "better to be annoying but safe" idea of git. You can always
> do "git checkout <branch> gitweb/gitweb.cgi" and "git checkout <branch>",
> and not use -f.

I think you are talking backwards. Newer branch have .cgi generated and older branch has it tracked. After you have built in a newer branch, checking out an older branch without -f option would play it safe not to clobber .cgi which is annoying. So workaround you would want to suggest is TO USE -f.

> Or add gitweb.cgi to .gitignore in the old branch.

And this "adding something to old one" is nonsense ;-).