# RE: for newbs = little exercise / tutorial / warmup for windows and other non-sophisticated new Git users :-) [Scanned]

2 messages from 2008-12-31 to 2008-12-31. Participants: Conor Rafferty, Daniel Barkalow.
Thread: https://gitlist.dev/t/16947

## Conor Rafferty, 2008-12-31 10:56

Subject: RE: for newbs = little exercise / tutorial / warmup for windows and other non-sophisticated new Git users :-) [Scanned]
Message-ID: <BB5F02FD3789B54E8964D38D6775E718242D38@ALTMORE-SVR.altmore.local>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/BB5F02FD3789B54E8964D38D6775E718242D38%40ALTMORE-SVR.altmore.local

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And you would be wrong, IMHO.  Many people have untracked files or
directories in their working directory ('cause they are working there)
that they don't want deleted willy-nilly.  Build files, modifications
that should be on a different branch, etc.  There's another thread
active on the list complaining that git removes too much from the
working tree.

** An SCM should be able to cope with both use cases. In fact I make it
easy for the SCM by deleting EVERYTHING from the working directory,
before calling git-checkout.

Most users of SCMs do make active modifications to the files in the SCM.
It's not a system only for archiving static projects.

** Archiving static projects is not the ONLY thing I want to do with my
SCM, it just happens to be the FIRST thing.

```

## Daniel Barkalow, 2008-12-31 16:00

Subject: RE: for newbs = little exercise / tutorial / warmup for windows and other non-sophisticated new Git users :-) [Scanned]
Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.1.00.0812311039370.19665@iabervon.org>
URL: https://gitlist.dev/e/alpine.LNX.1.00.0812311039370.19665%40iabervon.org
In-Reply-To: <BB5F02FD3789B54E8964D38D6775E718242D38@ALTMORE-SVR.altmore.local>

```
On Wed, 31 Dec 2008, Conor Rafferty wrote:

> And you would be wrong, IMHO.  Many people have untracked files or
> directories in their working directory ('cause they are working there)
> that they don't want deleted willy-nilly.  Build files, modifications
> that should be on a different branch, etc.  There's another thread
> active on the list complaining that git removes too much from the
> working tree.
> 
> ** An SCM should be able to cope with both use cases. In fact I make it
> easy for the SCM by deleting EVERYTHING from the working directory,
> before calling git-checkout.

In this case, git thinks you actually meant to delete those tracked files, 
and does its best to not undelete them unless you ask it to get them back. 
Git is very careful not to lose your changes, which is very nice most of 
the time, but means that you can't make changes and expect git to lose 
them.

	-Daniel
*This .sig left intentionally blank*

```