Re: [RFC PATCH] builtin/worktree: enhance worktree removal

[Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>]

On Wednesday 22 November 2017 03:07 AM, Eric Sunshine wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 10:09 AM, Kaartic Sivaraam
> <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The new feature to 'remove' worktree was handy to remove specific
>> worktrees. It didn't cover one particular case of removal. Specifically,
>> if there is an "entry" (a directory in <main_worktree>/.git/worktrees)
>> for a worktree but the worktree repository itself does not exist then
>> it means that the "entry" is stale and it could just be removed.
>>
>> So, in case there's a "worktree entry" but not "worktree direectory"
>> then just remove the 'stale' entry.
> 
> Let me see if I understand. Sometimes you know that you've deleted the
> worktree directory, in which case 'git worktree prune' is the obvious
> choice. However, there may be cases when you've forgotten that you
> deleted the worktree directory (or it got deleted some other way), yet
> it still shows up in "git worktree list" output with no indication
> that it has been deleted (though, ideally, it should tell you so[1]).
> In this case, you see a worktree that you know you no longer want, so
> you invoke "git worktree remove" but that errors out because the
> actual directory is already gone. This patch make the operation
> succeed, despite the missing directory. Is that correct?
> 

Yes. My primary motive for sending this is that, I thought it didn't 
make much sense for 'remove' to fail just because the directory didn't 
exist. Further, I thought it would be more flexible to allow for 
'selective' pruning of worktrees. The use case in which, I thought, this 
flexibility might prove helpful is that of 'scripts'.

Consider a hypothetical script that plays around with a git repository. 
Further, consider that spawns a new worktree for temporary use. It's 
quite natural for the script to consider cleaning up it's own mess and 
thus it might consider removing the worktree it created. With the 
'remove' command it is as easy is,

git worktree remove <worktree_id>

But what if it was the case that the directory might/might not exist 
when that part of the script is reached. In case the directory didn't 
exist the 'remove' command errors out that it didn't exist instead of 
just removing the worktree "entry" for that <worktree_id>. I thought it 
wasn't a good thing and thus this script.

After writing this, I feel I haven't justified it well (impostor 
syndrome, possibly). Anyways, at the end of the day this "ad-hoc" patch 
was just a result of my gut feeling that, "It didn't make sense for the 
'remove' command to fail when the directory didn't exist". The 
implementation is just a "sloppy" illustration of how it could be 
achieved and should "better" not be used as such.


> [1]: Excerpt from:
> https://public-inbox.org/git/CAPig+cTTrv2C7JLu1dr4+N8xo+7YQ+deiwLDA835wBGD6fhS1g@mail.gmail.com/
> 
> Other information which would be nice to display for each worktree
> [by the 'list' command] (possibly controlled by a --verbose flag):
> 
>     * the checked out branch or detached head
>     * whether it is locked
>          - the lock reason (if available)
>          - and whether the worktree is currently accessible
>      * whether it can be pruned
>          - and the prune reason if so
> 

It would nice to see this information. It would be very useful but 
'list' doesn't seem to be the right sub-sub-command to give such 
information. Maybe there should be a new sub-sub-command named 'info' or 
something to give such information?