Hi, On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 11:14 AM Junio C Hamano <gitster@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > [...] > So, all it boils down to is these two questions. Thanks for summarizing this. > * Which one between "'git add .' adds '.config' that users did not > want to add" and "'git clean -f' removes '.config' together with > other files" a larger problem to the users, who participate in a > project that already decided to use the new .gitignore feature to > mark ".config" as "precious", of older versions of Git that > predate "precious"? Accidental "git add ." comes with 3 opportunities to correct the problem before it becomes permanent: before commiting, after committing but before pushing, and after publishing for patch review (where it can even be caught by third parties) but before the patch/PR/MR is accepted and included. At each stage there's a chance to go back and correct the problem. Accidental nuking of a file (via either git clean or git checkout or git merge or whatever), cannot be reviewed or corrected; it's immediately too late. And given that we're calling this feature "precious", that seems a little extra unfortunate. > * What are projects doing to paths that they want to make > "precious" with the current system? Do they leave them out of > ".gitignore" and have them subject to accidental "git add ." to > protect them from "git clean -f"? Or do they list them in > ".gitignore" to prevent "git add ." from touching, but leave them > susceptible to accidental removal by "git clean -f"? Good questions; I have no answers to these. However, on a closely related note, in my response to Sebastian I point out that the '$' syntax permits individual teams to prioritize avoiding either accidental deletions or accidental adds on a filename or glob granularity, so if folks are concerned with handling by older Git versions or are just extra concerned with certain files, they can optimize accordingly. Sadly, the '#(keep)' syntax does not permit such prioritization and always treats avoiding accidental adds as the priority (which, in my opinion, is the less important one to generally prioritze).
