Re: [RFC PATCH] Introduce "precious" file concept

[Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:56 PM Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 1:45 AM Per Lundberg <per.lundberg@hibox.tv> wrote:
> >
> > On 11/26/18 5:55 PM, Duy Nguyen wrote:
> > > On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 4:47 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
> > > <avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> Some of the solutions overlap with this thing you want, but I think it's
> > >> worth keeping the distinction between the two in mind.
> > >
> > > On the other hand all use cases should be considered. It's going to be
> > > a mess to have "trashable" attribute that applies to some commands
> > > while "precious" to some others (and even worse when they overlap,
> > > imagine having to define both in .gitattributes)
> >
> > Agree - I think it would be a very bad idea to have a "mix" of both
> > trashable and precious. IMO, we should try to find which one of these
> > concepts suits most general use cases best and causes less churn for
> > existing scripts/users' existing "semantic expectations", and pick that one.
> > --
> > Per Lundberg
>
> Personally, I would rather err on the side which requires the least
> interaction from users to avoid silently clobbering an ignored file.
>
> Either Duy's solution with a sort of "untracked" reflog, or the
> garbage/trashable notion.
>
> I don't like the idea of precious because it means people have to know
> and remember to opt in, and it's quite possible they will not do so
> until after they've lost real data.
>
> I'd only have trashable apply in the case where it was implicit. i.e.
> git clean -fdx would still delete them, as this is an explicit
> operation that (hopefully?) users know will delete data.

Yes I know it will delete ignored files. But I don't want it to delete
some files. There is no way I can tell Git to do that.

It's the same with merge/checkout's overwriting problem. Once the
initial surprise is over, I want control over what files I want Git to
just delete and not annoy me, what Git should not delete.
-- 
Duy