Re: [PATCH] git-clean: Display more accurate delete messages

From: Zoltan Klinger <zoltan.klinger@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 11, 2012, 12:32 UTC
Message-ID: <CAKJhZwTEykP_w7-02YNUmi8D=X7nD8wSyFBD0_uGE6E760zkNQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v38zecrqc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Show 5 quoted lines

>> Use git clean --force --force to delete all untracked git repositories
>
> But I am not sure if this is ever sane.  Especially the one that
> removes an embedded repository is suspicious.  "git clean" should
> not ever touch it with or without --superforce or any other command.

My original intention with this patch was to provide more accurate delete messages for the git-clean command when it's used with the current set of command line options. I didn't know that --force --force was so controversial.

The --force --force option has been around since v1.6.4.2. Commit a0f4afbe introduced it. If the consensus is that it is not a sane option to have let's remove it by all means. But I think it should be done in a separate patch '[PATCH] git-clean: Never delete any embedded git repository' or such.

> I do not think trying to remove something that cannot be removed due
> to filesystem permissions is sensible, either. We simply should treat
> such a case a grave error and have the user sort things out, instead
> of blindly attempt to "chmod" them ourselves (which may still fail).

But this is not how git-clean works with or without the --force --force flag. The recursive delete does the right thing: it tries to delete a file or directory, if that fails for whatever reason it will report the error and move on. That's it. No "chmod" or any other hackery at all. The --force --force flag only means "if during recursion you encounter an embedded git directory that is not tracked you are allowed to recurse into it and keep on deleting files and sub-directories as per usual".

Cheers, Zoltan