On Sat, Mar 18, 2017 at 5:02 AM, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Junio C Hamano wrote: > >> There is no "untracked but precious" vs "untracked and expendable" >> difference in the current system. An untracked file that matches >> patterns listed in .gitignore is treated as the latter. > [...] >> We've discussed the lack of "untracked but precious" class a few >> times on the list in the past, but I do not recall the topic came up >> in the recent past. It perhaps is because nobody found that class >> useful enough so far. > > The most recent example I can find is 2010: > http://public-inbox.org/git/4C6A1C5B.4030304@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/. > > It also came up in 2007: > http://public-inbox.org/git/C0E9F681E68D48EB8989022D11FEE3D1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > Earlier in that year it even made the "What's not in 1.5.2" list. > http://public-inbox.org/git/11793556383977-git-send-email-junkio@xxxxxxx/ > > Perhaps those references could be a useful starting point for an > interested person's thinking. I think I made it work in 2014 [1] using new "precious" attribute, but never submitted it, probably because I was worried about the interaction with untracked cache (adding .gitattributes as a new dependency) though maybe we can avoid that by always checking for preciousness after all the tree walking/filtering is done, either with or without untracked cache. But I never addressed that loose end. Then again, it could also be another useful starting point for interested person's thinking ;-) [1] https://github.com/pclouds/git/commit/0e7f7afa1879b055369ebd3f1224311c43c8a32b -- Duy