Re: What's cooking in git.git (topics)

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

I am personally very much in favor of removing "git clean", but
having many people on the list saying loudly that it is a bad
command is not good enough justification, as people who are
content with the status quo tend to be silent.

The steps I think is sensible to transition to that goal would
be:

 - Change clean.requireForce to default to 'true' in the next
   (or one after) version of git, to make 'clean' even safer.
   See if anybody complains (I do not expect any).

 - Implement the same functionarity as a new option to "git rm",
   which is already in C.

 - Do "git clean" in C, but sharing the code with "git rm"
   implementation above.

 - Discuss deprecation and removal of redundant commands.  Ship
   a version of git with deprecation and future removal notice.
   Outline how to achieve the same thing as the deprecated
   command used to do (or give convincing argument why what the
   deprecated command used to do was a bad thing and do not
   offer an alternative).

 - Wait for a while (6 months to 1 year) and then remove them.

And this is the first step.

---

 Documentation/config.txt |    4 ++--
 git-clean.sh             |    6 +++++-
 2 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/config.txt b/Documentation/config.txt
index edf50cd..2144855 100644
--- a/Documentation/config.txt
+++ b/Documentation/config.txt

@@ -345,8 +345,8 @@ branch.<name>.mergeoptions::
 	supported.
 
 clean.requireForce::
-	A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f or -n.  Defaults
-	to false.
+	A boolean to make git-clean do nothing unless given -f
+	or -n.   Defaults to true.
 
 color.branch::
 	A boolean to enable/disable color in the output of

diff --git a/git-clean.sh b/git-clean.sh
index 4491738..f4965b8 100755
--- a/git-clean.sh
+++ b/git-clean.sh

@@ -20,12 +20,16 @@ require_work_tree
 ignored=
 ignoredonly=
 cleandir=
-disabled="`git config --bool clean.requireForce`"
 rmf="rm -f --"
 rmrf="rm -rf --"
 rm_refuse="echo Not removing"
 echo1="echo"
 
+# requireForce used to default to false but now it defaults to true.
+# IOW, lack of explicit "clean.requireForce = false" is taken as
+# "clean.requireForce = true".
+disabled=$(git config --bool clean.requireForce || echo true)
+
 while test $# != 0
 do
 	case "$1" in