Re: Tracking the untracked

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: May 7, 2009, 08:22 UTC
Message-ID: <m33abhnx01.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <93c3eada0905070058g7f619a56jfb9b49f02bb92f9b@mail.gmail.com>

Geoff Russell <geoffrey.russell@gmail.com> writes:

> On 5/6/09, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:
> > Geoff Russell wrote:

> > > Bug or feature? I don't know.
> >
> >
> > Feature.

[...]

Show 8 quoted lines

> Ok, its clearly a policy choice.  But suppose I have an untracked
> file and I do "git some-command" then I don't expect git to touch what
> it doesn't know about. I.e., "git add x" shouldn't delete the untracked
> file y. That seems sensible. But now "git checkout branch" behaves
> quite differently in just deleting stuff that it doesn't own (i.e., is
> untracked).
> 
> Anyway, I'll rethink.

First, did you consider just .gitignore'ing untracked files, and if they are compilation products use cc-cache instead?

Second, the way git treats untracked files is simple: do not lose information. If a file is tracked, or to be more exact specific contents of a file is in repository, then deleting it would not remove information.

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git