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

[Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com>]

On Mon, Nov 26, 2018 at 10:30 AM Per Lundberg <per.lundberg@hibox.tv> wrote:
>
> On 11/13/18 1:22 AM, brian m. carlson wrote:
> > This is going to totally hose automation.  My last job had files which
> > might move from tracked to untracked (a file that had become generated),
> > and long-running CI and build systems would need to be able to check out
> > one status and switch to the other.  Your proposed change will prevent
> > those systems from working, whereas they previously did.
> >
> > I agree that your proposal would have been a better design originally,
> > but breaking the way automated systems currently work is probably going
> > to be a dealbreaker.
>
> How about something like this:
>
> 1. Introduce a concept with "garbage" files, which git is "permitted to
> delete" without prompting.
>
> 2. Retain the current default, i.e. "ignored files are garbage" for now,
> making the new behavior _opt in_ to avoid breaking automated
> systems/existing scripts for anyone. Put the setting for this behind a
> new core.* config flag.
>
> 3. In the plan for version 3.0 (a new major version where some breakage
> can be tolerable, according to Semantic Versioning), change the default
> so that "only explicit garbage is garbage". Include very clear notices
> of this in the release notes. The config flag is retained, but its
> default changes from true->false or vice versa. People who dislike the
> new behavior can easily change back to the 2.x semantics.

How does this garbage thing interact with "git clean -x"? My
interpretation of this flag/attribute is that at version 3.0 by
default all ignored files are _not_ garbage, so "git clean -x" should
not remove any of them. Which is weird because most of ignored files
are like *.o that should be removed.

I also need to mark "precious" on untracked or even tracked files (*).
Not sure how this "garbage" attribute interacts with that.

(*) I was hoping I could get the idea [1] implemented in somewhat good
shape before presenting here. But I'm a bit slow on that front. So
yeah this "precious" on untracked/tracked thingy may be even
irrelevant if the patch series will be rejected.

[1] https://public-inbox.org/git/CACsJy8C3rOFv0kQeJrWufQQzbnfU4mSxJtphEYBGMmrroFFN-A@mail.gmail.com/

> Would this be a reasonable compromise for everybody?
-- 
Duy