Re: what should "git clean -n -f [-d] [-x] <pattern>" do?

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

Even though I do not personally like it, I do not think "which between do-it (f) and do-not-do-it (n) do you want to use?" is broken. It sometimes irritates me to find "git clean" (without "-f" or "-n", and with clean.requireForce not disabled) complain, and I personally think "git clean" when clean.requireForce is in effect and no "-n" or "-f" were given should pretend as if "-n" were given. I wish if it were "without -n or -f, we pretend as if -n were given, possibly with a warning that says 'you need -f if you actually want to carry out these operations'".

But that is a separate usability issue.

What I find broken is that giving one 'f' and one 'n' in different order, i.e. "-f -n" and "-n -f", does not do what I expect. If you are choosing between do-it (f) and do-not-do-it (n), you ought to be able to rely on the usual last-one-wins rule. That I find broken.

The mistake[*] of "-f -f" is rather obvious, given that the other "normal" ways to tweak what is affected by the command are done as "what else do we clean? directories (d)? ignored (x)?..." options. When we add the upcoming "precious" bit support, we should make sure that the way to trigger "oh, by the way, please clobber those paths that are marked precious, too" is not by giving three '-f'. It would make it impossible to ask for that without also removing nested repositories, which takes two '-f'.

[Footnote]

 * To a lessor extent, the -v (verbose) option shares the same
   problem as "-f -f" here, in that its worldview is to assume that
   a single "verbosity level" is sufficient.  Unlike the severity
   level thing, however, the user who wanted to see only messages
   about X but have to also see messages about Y and Z that are at
   the same or lessor verbosity level as X can filter out unwanted
   messages without causing a real harm.