From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Date: Wed, 01 Feb 2006 03:43:12 GMT
Subject: Re: [Census] So who uses git?
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0601311938130.7301@g5.osdl.org>
In-Reply-To: <7v64nzollt.fsf@assigned-by-dhcp.cox.net>



On Tue, 31 Jan 2006, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> 
> I think this should work fine as a mechanism, but I am a bit
> worried about the convenience and safety aspect.  It _might_
> make sense to do what RCS does; check out read-only copy by
> default and set the "assume unchanged" flag, to prevent people
> from accidentally modifying the working tree copy without
> telling the index about it.

Yes, I think the "assume unchanged" flag goes well together with making 
sure that the checked-out file is non-writable at the time.

Of course, any number of editors and other actions won't care: if you do 
anything like

	for i in *.c
	do
		sed 's/xyzzy/bas/g' < $i > $i.new
		mv $i.new $i
	done

you'll never have even noticed that the old file was marked read-only. So 
it's obviously not in any way any guarantee, but it probably makes sense 
as a crutch.

Your point that we discussed a similar flag for the "don't require a full 
checkout" is a good one: we should try to make sure that it works for both 
uses. Although maybe we decided for some reason that nobody cared about 
the non-checked-out case?

		Linus