Re: Newbie falls at first hurdle

Alan Chandler [off-list ref] writes:

The editor file that came up with this listed all the files it was going to 
commit INCLUDING some .files from the root directory (I am using eclipse, so 
I had files like .project and .classpath there).  It says in the 
Documentation that git ignores those - has it done?

We ignore '.git' but we let you have paths starting with dots
these days -- the change happened quite a while ago and if some
documentation still says we do not, then you spotted a
documentation bug.

I then deleted these directories again and then attempted to check them out 
from the repository with

git checkout master

None of these directories has been created in my working directory.

After you told git about those files, you removed them from your
working tree.  "git checkout" tries not to lose your local
changes -- which means that what you removed will be left
removed (so are what you locally edited).

    $ git checkout -f

would give them back, but you would also lose other local
changes if you have some.