I understand, I shall copy the empty config and paste into a new ignored file where I then add my personal customizations. What if, however, all git commands besides ‘git pull’ and ‘git fetch’, are able to modify the files in question. Would we then have a potential new git feature? > On Aug 3, 2023, at 2:38 PM, brian m. carlson <sandals@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On 2023-08-03 at 17:17:15, Johannes Sixt wrote: >>> Am 03.08.23 um 07:35 schrieb Hilco Wijbenga: >>> I think you might be looking for "git update-index --assume-unchanged >>> <file>"? See https://www.git-scm.com/docs/git-update-index for more >>> details. >> >> Sorry to tell you that this is a myth that lives on because it is >> repeated over and over again. > > This is indeed false. > >>> This allows you to tell Git to ignore the changes you made to that >>> (tracked) file. >> >> No. --assume-unchanged allows you to make the *promise* to Git that you >> will not change the file, and consequently Git does not have to check >> whether the file was changed. If you break the promise (because you >> change it), you will get what you deserve. For example, you may find >> that Git overwrites your changes, or commits them nevertheless. >> >> Perhaps a better choice is --skip-worktree, but recent answers on >> Stackoverflow point out that even that is not a suitable solution for >> "please, Git, ignore these changes". > > Neither of these is an acceptable option. Here's an entry from the FAQ, > which I have referred to several times (on StackOverflow and elsewhere): > > How do I ignore changes to a tracked file? > > Git doesn't provide a way to do this. The reason is that if Git needs > to overwrite this file, such as during a checkout, it doesn't know > whether the changes to the file are precious and should be kept, or > whether they are irrelevant and can safely be destroyed. Therefore, > it has to take the safe route and always preserve them. > > It's tempting to try to use certain features of `git update-index`, > namely the assume-unchanged and skip-worktree bits, but these don't > work properly for this purpose and shouldn't be used this way. > > If your goal is to modify a configuration file, it can often be > helpful to have a file checked into the repository which is a template > or set of defaults which can then be copied alongside and modified as > appropriate. This second, modified file is usually ignored to prevent > accidentally committing it. > > There's no option to do this and you should adopt a different approach. > Probably 95% of the circumstances I see where people are trying to > ignore tracked files can be done by moving the original file to another > path and using a script to copy and modify the file to an ignored path. > -- > brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them) > Toronto, Ontario, CA
