Re: [BUG?] git checkout $commit -- somedir doesn't drop files

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 17, 2013, 22:00 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqk3ifw1km.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130917212106.GB20178@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

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> On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 01:40:17PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Taking the state of a subdirectory as a whole as "content", the
>> change we are discussing will make it more like "rm -fr dir && tar
>> xf some-content dir" to replace the directory wholesale, which I
>> personally think is a good thing in the longer term.
>
> Yeah, that makes sense. What about untracked files?

Obviously we cannot literally do "rm -fr dir && tar x", but I agree that if tree-ish has a path that is not tracked in the current index, the path should be overwritten and made identical to what is in the tree-ish.

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> Right now we overwrite them if the tree-ish has an entry at the same
> path; that is a bit more dangerous than the rest of git, but does match
> the "ignore local modifications" rule. I assume if we handled deletions,
> though, that we would simply leave them be.
>
> So given that, is it fair to say that a one-way "go here" merge, limited
> by pathspec, is the closest equivalent?

Sorry, but it is unclear to me what you mean by one-way "go here" merge. Do you mean oneway_merge() in unpack-trees.c?