Re: Bug Report: .gitignore behavior is not matching in git clean and git status

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 1, 2017, 01:41 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq60hljqud.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CABfTTAchc61aB02sCD=Oa9gRMGr94h7mC53B9q6Qy2k2hDqzAQ@mail.gmail.com>

Chris Johnson <chrisjohnson0@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> I am a mailing list noob so I’m sorry if this is the wrong format or
> the wrong please.
>
> Here’s the setup for the bug (I will call it a bug but I half expect
> somebody to tell me I’m an idiot):
>
> git init
> echo "/A/B/" > .gitignore

You tell Git that anything in A/B/ are uninteresting.

> git add .gitignore && git commit -m 'Add ignore'
> mkdir -p A/B
> touch A/B/C

And create an uninteresting cruft.

> git status

And Git does not bug you about it.

> git clean -dn

This incorrectly reports "Would remove A/" and if you gave 'f' instead of 'n', it does remove A/, A/B, and A/B/C.

Despite that "git clean --help" says 'only files unknown to Git are removed' (with an undefined term 'unknown to Git'). What it wants the term mean can be guessed by seeing 'if the -x option is specified, ignored files are also removed'---so 'unknown to Git' does not include what you told .gitignore that they are uninteresting. IOW, Git knows they are not interesting.

It looks like a bug in "git clean -d" to me. Do you see the same issue if you use "git clean" without "-d"? IOW, does it offer to remove A/B/C?