On Mon, Nov 12 2018, Matthieu Moy wrote: > "Per Lundberg" <per.lundberg@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > >> On 11/11/18 5:41 PM, Duy Nguyen wrote: >> > On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 1:33 PM Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason >> > <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> >> That will lose no data, and in the very rare cases where a checkout of >> >> tracked files would overwrite an ignored pattern, we can just error out >> >> (as we do with the "Ok to overwrite" branch removed) and tell the user >> >> to delete the files to proceed. >> > There's also the other side of the coin. If this refuse to overwrite >> > triggers too often, it can become an annoyance. > > I may have missed some cases, but to me the cases when checkout may try > to overwrite an ignored file are essentially: > > * Someone "git add"ed a file meant to be ignored by mistake (e.g. > "git add -f *.o"). > > * A file that was meant to be kept private (e.g. config.mak.dev) ends > up being tracked. This may happen when we find a way to make per-developer > settings the same for everyone. Yes, the cases under discussion here are all cases where a tracked file clobbers a file matching a pattern in in .gitignore. What I'd add to your list is: * Some projects (I've seen this in the wild) add e.g. *.mp3 or whatever else usually doesn't belong in the repo as a "soft ignore". This is something we've never recommended, but have implicitly supported since the only caveats are a) you need a one-off "git add -f" and then they're tracked b) them being missing from "status" before being tracked c) the issue under discussion here. * Cases where e.g. filename changes to a directory or globs because of that make this more complex. > I both cases I'd want at least to be notified that something is going on, > and in the second I'd probably want to keep my local file around. >> If we feel thrashable is stretching it too far (which I don't think it >> is), we could add a "core.ignore_files_are_trashable" setting that >> brings back the old semantics, for those who have a strong feeling about it. > > May I remind an idea I sugested in an old thread: add an intermediate level > where ignored files to be overwritten are renamed (eg. foo -> foo~ like Emacs' > backup files): > > https://public-inbox.org/git/vpqd3t9656k.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ > > One advantage of the "rename" behavior is that it's safer that the current, > but still not very disturbing for people who like the current behavior. This > makes it a good candidate for a default behavior. > > This could come in complement with this thread's "precious" concept: > > * If you know what you're doing and know that such or such file is precious, > mark it as such and Git will never overwrite it. > > * If you don't know about precious files, just keep the default setting and > the worse that can happen is to get your file overwritten with a bakup > of the old version kept around. > > This would probably play better with a notion of "precious" files than with > a notion of "trashable" files. I used to think this foo -> foo~ approach made the most sense (and said as much in https://public-inbox.org/git/871s8qdzph.fsf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/) but I think it's probably best not to do it and just error out, because: * We'd still need to handle the cases where "tests" the file collides with "tests" the directory. Then where do we move the colliding file? ~/.git/lost+found/* ? We could handle the subdir case with another special-case though... * I think such silent action will just leave users more confused, and in many cases (e.g. a merge) whatever message we print out will be missed in a deluge of other messaging, and they'll probably miss it. I'd like to avoid a case where a bunch of *~ files get committed because the user's workflow is (and some beginner git users do this): git pull && git add . && git commit && git push As the "pull" would now invoke a merge that would do this rename. * If I have the "foo" file open in my editor (a plausible way to run into this) I switch to another terminal, do the merge, miss the message, then re-save "foo". Now I have both "foo" and "foo~" on-disk. Another case where we should just refuse until the user resolves the situation to avoid the confusion.
