Re: [PATCH] clean: new option --exclude-from

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 2, 2015, 17:25 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqd1uo69vf.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20151202164712.GA16636@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

Show 7 quoted lines

> .... So maybe "clean" is really the only place where people care
> about such ad-hoc exclusion. Or maybe this an opportunity to add:
>
>   git --exclude='*.o' clean
>
> I dunno. I cannot think of a time when I would have used any of those
> options myself.

Me either and I do not think I ever wanted to use -e to "clean".

I do not think we should liberally add options that apply to anything "git" in the first place [*1*]. Limit them to ones that are really special and fundamental that changes the way Git operates, i.e. "Where is our $GIT_DIR?" is a good thing for users to be able to tell "git" itself. Compared to that, the ignore patterns is a fringe that is used only by commands that care about the working tree (e.g. the global option in "git --exclude='*.o' ls-tree" would be meaningless).

[Footnote]

*1* It would add unnecessary confusion to the end users; they have
    to decide if they need to pass an option before or after the
    subcommand name.  If the motivation behind the "git --option cmd"
    is to share code and semantics for common "--option", we should
    instead further refactor command line option handling, just like
    the code for config handling allows us to share config_default.