Re: gitignore design

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 29, 2011, 12:57 UTC
Message-ID: <m3tya5qm86.fsf@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <1311943481799-6633412.post@n2.nabble.com>

llucianf <llucianf@gmail.com> writes:

> im sure cvs doesnt require you to remove files from repo in order to ignore
> them. i used cvs for years and its ingonre policy is simple and effective.
> you just put the files/patterns into ignore file and things happen aka they
> are ignored.

_Untracked_ files are ignored.  Tracked files are not, even with CVS.

  $ echo file2.txt >>.cvsignore
  $ echo "3 line"  >>file2.txt

Now 'cvs status' shows file as

  File: file2.txt         Status: Locally Modified

and 'cvs diff' shows changes.

CVS 1.11.19

[And damn, how hard it was to check this in CVS as compared to
 checking similar things with Git].

> with this very intelligent git this simple thing is not so simple. of course
> there are workarounds (like the template example you gave) but they are
> clumsy.

They are correct and better solutions than ignoring changes.

Ignoring changes to tracked files is much more rare than having broad ignore file, and tracking some files that match ignore patterns (but note that you must use "git add --force" to add/track ignored file).

> im just trying to understand why git ignore mechanism cant just read the
> .gitignore file and obey to those ignore rules without asking you to do
> fancy voodoo operations such removing those files from repo.

Please read carefully: I mentioned 'ASSUME-UNCHANGED' mechanism in both of my posts, haven't I?

-- 
Jakub Narębski