Re: [PATCH 1/2] Add "--only-untracked" flag to status commands.

From: Väinö Järvelä <v@pp.inet.fi>
Date: Aug 24, 2007, 09:31 UTC
Message-ID: <9B94A29F-AF61-46C0-8497-C7372DF73250@pp.inet.fi>
In-Reply-To: <7v8x81s7d1.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Aug 24, 2007, at 10:46, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Väinö Järvelä <v@pp.inet.fi> writes:
>
>> The way I see the flag used is: A user runs "git status", sees that
>> there is too much untracked files and not enough scrollback, so he
>> runs "git status --only-tracked" to filter the results.
>
> Why?
>
> Just set up .gitignore once then (1) you do not have to worry
> about them ever again, and (2) you _will_ still be able to
> notice if you accidentally added more cruft, or more
> importantly, if you forgot to tell an important file to git.
>
> I think the latter is more important point.  If you train a
> naive user to use --only-tracked to ignore "Untracked" list, you
> are doing him or her a great disservice.  Mistake to forget "git
> add" a new file before commiting will bound to happen.

I also think that maintaining a proper .gitignore is imporant, and more productive than using --only-tracked instead. But when I have cruft that can't be put in .gitignore, or it would ignore files that are supposed to be shown and tracked, I use --only-tracked.

It's true though, that the user might forget to add a file if he always uses --only-tracked, that's why I added the note in the status that the untracked files were filtered out. The flag is supposed to be a helper for situations where .gitignore wouldn't work, not a way to work always. Maybe if this flag is accepted, the manual should say that in most cases it's better to use .gitignore.

-- Väinö