Re: [PATCH v2 20/23] .gitignore: touch up the entries regarding Visual Studio

[Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.email>]

Hi Szeder,

On 25/08/2019 20:09, SZEDER Gábor wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 02:20:32PM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:
>> Hi Szeder,
>>
>> On 25/08/2019 13:07, SZEDER Gábor wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jul 29, 2019 at 01:08:14PM -0700, Philip Oakley via GitGitGadget wrote:
>>>> Add the Microsoft .manifest pattern, and do not anchor the 'Debug'
>>>> and 'Release' entries at the top-level directory, to allow for
>>>> multiple projects (one per target).
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
>>>> ---
>>>>   .gitignore | 5 +++--
>>>>   1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>>>>
>>>> diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
>>>> index e096e0a51c..e7bb15d301 100644
>>>> --- a/.gitignore
>>>> +++ b/.gitignore
>>>> @@ -230,6 +230,7 @@
>>>>   *.ipdb
>>>>   *.dll
>>>>   .vs/
>>>> -/Debug/
>>>> -/Release/
>>>> +*.manifest
>>> This new line ignores the tracked file 'compat/win32/git.manifest'
>>> that was added fairly recently in fe90397604 (mingw: embed a manifest
>>> to trick UAC into Doing The Right Thing, 2019-06-27).
>>>
>>> I wonder whether that's intentional or accidental.
>>>
>>> I'm inclined to think that it's merely accidental, because, as far as
>>> I understand, this is an old-ish patch from times when there wasn't
>>> any 'git.manifest' file in tree, and simply noone noticed that in the
>>> meantime we got one.  But I have no idea about how a Git build with
>>> Visual Studio is supposed to work, so it doesn't really matter what
>>> I'm inclined to think :)
>>>
>> At the time, it was just one of the many non-source files that were
>> generated by Visual Studio that cluttered the status list and also could
>> accidentally added to the tracked files.
>>
>> The newly added .manifest file does appear to be there to 'trick' the
>> Windows User Access Control (UAC) which otherwise can be an annoyance to
>> 'regular' users.
> Sorry, I'm not sure how to interpret your reply, and can't decide
> whether it tries to justify why that tracked file should be ignored,
> or explains that ignoring it was accidental.
>
> Anyway, ignoring that tracked file apparently triggered a nested
> worktree-related bug in 'git clean', which can lead to data loss:
>
> https://public-inbox.org/git/20190825185918.3909-1-szeder.dev@gmail.com/
>
Basically manifests are a build artefact from Visual Studio [1], so it 
was just another file to be ignored, from a _source_ control control 
viewpoint.

I hadn't fully appreciated the reason for your question, but I can now 
see how the general 'ignore most, but keep an occasional' file type can 
be a problem for the `git clean` filter, along with sub-module repos in 
sub-directories. It probably extends beyond this special case .manifest 
file.

I doubt that dscho wants to also do file renaming to achieve the trick 
that added that file to avoid this. the clean command should never be 
ignoring (and possibly deleting) tracked files.

When clean hits a nested repo (maybe with .git directory - not sure of 
some of the sub-module changes) then it should stop referring to that 
top level gitignore, at least that's my expectation. The commit 
description in the referenced patch appears to get the two parts 
inter-twined.

Philip
[1] 
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/build/manifest-generation-in-visual-studio?view=vs-2019