Re: .gitignore is not enough

From: Hilco Wijbenga <hilco.wijbenga@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 3, 2023, 17:49 UTC
Message-ID: <CAE1pOi1xtaEo6LtF4VnXetmLYK5VbYU5uq7gGC=PpnVB3MWdag@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <c2fea20d-af37-8721-5bd8-14bbc3daf937@kdbg.org>

The promise part, I was aware of. In that sense, my wording was too strong. It's more like "just trust me".

So the "you will get what you deserve" makes sense. If the original/default/skeleton changes for some reason, your local changes will just get overwritten. Nothing surprising there.

But in what scenario would Git "commit them nevertheless"? That one is a surprise to me and is a bit worrisome.

On Thu, Aug 3, 2023 at 10:17 AM Johannes Sixt <j6t@kdbg.org> wrote:

Show 24 quoted lines

>
> Am 03.08.23 um 07:35 schrieb Hilco Wijbenga:
> > I think you might be looking for "git update-index --assume-unchanged
> > <file>"? See https://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-update-index for more
> > details.
>
> Sorry to tell you that this is a myth that lives on because it is
> repeated over and over again.
>
> > This allows you to tell Git to ignore the changes you made to that
> > (tracked) file.
>
> No. --assume-unchanged allows you to make the *promise* to Git that you
> will not change the file, and consequently Git does not have to check
> whether the file was changed. If you break the promise (because you
> change it), you will get what you deserve. For example, you may find
> that Git overwrites your changes, or commits them nevertheless.
>
> Perhaps a better choice is --skip-worktree, but recent answers on
> Stackoverflow point out that even that is not a suitable solution for
> "please, Git, ignore these changes".
>
> -- Hannes
>