Re: [RFH] "git clean" deletes excluded files in untracked directories

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jul 22, 2014, 21:39 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq8unlf4z4.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20140702191114.GA3474@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

> If you have an untracked directory that contains excluded files, like
> this:
>
>   mkdir foo
>   echo content >foo/one
>   echo content >foo/two
>   echo "foo/one" >.gitignore
>
> then "git clean -d" will notice that "foo" is untracked and recursively
> delete it and its contents, including the ignored "foo/one".

Hmph, starting from an empty repository and doing the above four commands, and "git clean" without "-d" does not bother removing either foo/one or foo/two. Is this correct?

It gets worse.  Following the above four commands and then these two:

    >foo/three
    git add foo/two

and "git clean" (with or without "-d") suddenly notices that "foo/three" is expendable, but not foo/one nor foo/two, which sounds about right.

Honestly, as I do not use "git clean" myself, I do not know what the "right" behaviour is for that command. Anything it does seems just arbitrary and wrong to me ;-)