Re: [BUG] rebase --interactive silently overwrites ignored files

[Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com>]

Hi Junio

On 05/05/2019 05:02, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Phillip Wood <phillip.wood123@gmail.com> writes:
> 
>> I've had a look at the rebase -i code and I think it only overwrites
>> ignored files when it is fast-forwarding. This matches what merge does
>> when fast-forwarding but I'm not convinced either of them should be
>> doing this by default (I think checkout doing it is probably asking
>> for trouble)...
> 
>> I'll put a patch together to fix rebase -i, I'd like to see the
>> defaults for merge and checkout changed but I'm not sure that would be
>> popular.
> 
> I suspect that such a change in behaviour for "rebase -i" is not a
> fix but a regression.  Shouldn't it be consistent with checkout and
> merge?

My problem is that I don't really understand why some operations should 
overwrite ignored files and others shouldn't. Having nearly all rebase 
operations preserve ignored files and only overwriting them for a 
fast-forward seems confusing and probably surprising to users. Is it a 
bug that pull does not overwrite ignored files when fast-forwarding but 
merge does? Why is it ok to overwrite ignored files when merge 
fast-forwards but not otherwise?

>> It does seem like surprising behavior though when most
>> operations try to preserve untracked files.
> 
> Are you conflating untracked and ignored?
> 
> Because we haven't adopted 'precious' (or whatever the final name
> would be), which is "ignored but not expendable", ignored files are
> by definition "ignored and expendable".  

My confusion is that they are only "ignored and expendable" in certain 
circumstances. Many git operations actually fail if they are going to 
overwrite an ignored file [1] - I don't understand if that is 
intentional or not.

Best Wishes

Phillip

[1] 
https://public-inbox.org/git/CAL_tzDFQQtDYMStN+RDVYN_TzJmO+kufMhG9PGHwvsUWREpgWQ@mail.gmail.com/

> When checkout (and merge
> that is its more general form) needs to match the working tree to
> the index contents and an ingored file is in the way, it should
> overwrite it.
> 
> Until we introduce "ignored but not expendable" class, that is.
>