Re: Removing files

From: Junio C Hamano <junkio@cox.net>
Date: Jan 11, 2007, 22:41 UTC
Message-ID: <7vejq12nlu.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>
In-Reply-To: <87bql5cok3.fsf@morpheus.local>

David Kågedal <davidk@lysator.liu.se> writes:

> I'm wondering what the best way to commit the removal of a file is.

 $ rm -f foo
 $ git-commit -a

Show 8 quoted lines

> git status shows:
>
>   $ git status
>   # On branch refs/heads/messages
>   # Changed but not added:
>   #   (use "git add <file>..." to incrementally add content to commit)
>   #
>   #       deleted:    foo

Suggesting "git add" to record the deletion feels insane. Is this what we still do? I think there have been much work in this area recently so the wordings might have already fixed.

Show 5 quoted lines

> Ok, so that didn't work.  Let's try rm instead:
>
>   $ git rm foo
>   fatal: pathspec 'foo' did not match any files
>

The above message is from an older version of git-rm, but the one that will be in v1.5.0 is not any better. It errs out with "No such file or directory". A workaround using today's tool is to do "git rm --cached fo"

I think the right fix is to suggest "git add/rm" in status output and make "git rm" not barf if the user has already removed the file from the working tree.