RE: [EXTERNAL] Re: BUG: git clean -d cannot remove files from read-only directories

[Adam Milazzo <Adam.Milazzo@microsoft.com>]

> Simply because that is how users would expect how the world works (iow, model things after what they are already familiar with).

This seems to be an avoidance of my actual arguments about 1) the purpose of "git clean" and what behavior best matches it, and 2) the violation of the general principle that if a tool invoked programmatically can fail, then there should be a reasonable way for users to avoid the failure if possible. But my response is:

First, there is no obvious choice for what other tool to model "git clean" on, even assuming that it should be so modeled. This goes back to the purpose of "git clean". Is it just a recursive delete? Or it bringing the directory tree back to a certain state? I'd argue the latter, and if we want point to existing tools I'd point to rsync, which has no problem deleting files from read-only directories if it's needed to bring a directory tree to the desired state. It doesn't even give a warning about it.

Second, I doubt anybody here actually knows (i.e. has data demonstrating) that users expect 'git clean' to behave like 'rm'. Also, I am a user, and it is not what _I_ expect. (And since some people here seem keen to dismiss what I say based on an assumption of ignorance, I've been programming for 30 years, using GNU/Linux, BSD, and other UNIX-like systems for almost 20 years, and using various source control systems for about as long. Not that that should carry any intrinsic weight in this discussion.)

Comparing to "rm" again, there is an easy way for users of "rm" to avoid the error. Simply replace "rm -rf X" with "chmod -R u+w X; rm -rf X". What is the comparable workaround with "git clean"? There is none that I'm aware of, and that's perhaps the main reason why it would be useful for "git clean" to be able to handle it. If there is a reasonable workaround, what is it? The best simple workarounds I've been able to come up with are:

* For "git clean -fd": git status -s -uall | grep -E '^\?\?.*/$' | cut -c 4- | xargs -r chmod -R u+w; git clean -fd
* For "git clean -fdx": git status -s -uall --ignored | grep -E '^\?\?.*/$' | cut -c 4- | xargs -r chmod -R u+w; git clean -fdx
* For "git clean -fX": ??
* For "git clean -f": ??

These are not reliable because there are various conditions where they fail (including ours), so I'm not sure they are viable approaches except in certain special cases. It's possible to handle all the possibilities with custom scripting, but the workarounds would become quite complex.

So I ask again, if "git clean" won't have any option to handle it like rsync does, what is the workaround that can be placed in a script to get the same behavior? And if there is no reasonable workaround, perhaps it is a useful feature to have "git clean" try a little harder to delete the files, or have an option to do so?