> > Would something like git clean --exclude=file-pattern work as a
> > compromise notion? Files matching the pattern would not be cleaned
> > regardless of .gitignore or their potential preciousness status
> > long-term. Multiple repetitions of the --exclude option might be
> > supportable. I could see that being somewhat useful in scripting.
>
> I think "git clean" already takes "-e", but I am not sure if it is
> meant to do what you wrote above.
It does already take --exclude=file-pattern, which is like adding
lines to .gitignore. (W/o -x/-X, that would mean DON'T clean them, but
with -x/-X, it means DO clean them.)
>
> If "git clean" takes a pathspec, perhaps you can give a negative
> pathspec to exclude whatever you do not want to get cleaned,
> something like
>
> git clean '*.o' ':!precious.o'
>
I like this, but I'm also 100% satisfied with Junio's previous suggestion:
git -c core.excludesFile=/dev/null clean ...
