On Mon, Nov 12 2018, Junio C Hamano wrote: > Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> 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. > > Or only selected "*.o" (vendor supplied binary blob) kept tracked > while everything else is built from the source. > > I do not know who you are referring to "we" in your sentence, but as > far as I am concerned, it has been and still is a BCP recommendation > on this list to deal with a case like that. I mean that this use-case of having a "soft" ignore by carrying it across the "git add" barrier with a one-off "-f" isn't something explicitly documented, and apparently not something many expect. I.e. you / Matthieu have mentioned .gitignore in the past for only-generated *.o use-case. But it also does get used for "mostly we don't want this file, but sometimes we do" use-case, so that's something we need to deal with in practice. Like many workflows in git it's not something that was forseen or intended, but does happen in the wild.
