Re: [PATCH/WIP 01/11] Introduce "check-attr --excluded" as a replacement for "add --ignore-missing"

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 27, 2011, 18:08 UTC
Message-ID: <7vfwiez4s5.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <1319438176-7304-2-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy  <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> --ignore-missing is used by submodule to check if a path may be
> ignored by .gitignore files. It does not really fit in git-add (git
> add takes pathspec, but --ignore-missing takes only paths)
>
> Google reckons that --ignore-missing is not used anywhere but
> git-submodule.sh. Remove --ignore-missing and introduce "check-attr
> --excluded" as a replacement.

Hmm. "add --ignore-missing" somehow does not fit very well with other uses of the option of the same name. In all other contexts, "ignore-missing" means just that: ignore the fact that whatever _thing_ we were made to expect to exist by the instruction from the user does not exist, which usually results in an error or a report. "add --ignore-missing" does not seem to be that (for one thing, it requires --dry-run).

It is unclear to me what is supposed to do to after reading the three-line documentation in the manpage X-<.

So I am perfectly OK with the removal in the current form.

But I do not think "is this path ignored with the .gitignore rules" check belongs to check-attr, either.

The pattern of having .scmignore files to list ignored paths were forced upon us by historical version control systems, in the name of "the users expect it". If there weren't such constraints, it would have been far nicer---we could have just said "if you want to ignore paths, just use the attributes mechanism and give them the 'ignored' attribute" without having to have the exclude mechanism.

But we do not live in that ideal world.

Perhaps ls-files is a more suitable home for the feature?