Re: [PATCH] fast-import: add ignore non-existent files option.

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

"Shawn O. Pearce" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

OK, that argument makes sense.  Then I wonder if more specific
error ignoring would be better:

  --ignore-error=already-deleted
  --ignore-error=already-deleted,missing-mark,missing-copy-source

I'm not really fond of turning an existing error condition that
exists to catch broken frontends into a generic tolerant flag.
But being able to selectively turn it off while leaving other
errors as errors isn't entirely unreasonable.

I think selective loosening of consistency check makes sense very much,
but I have been wondering if these should be command line options.

The only example we saw so far is about output from one exporter.  Perhaps
it should be given to fast-import as initial set of commands ("#pragma"!)
that describes the nature of the input file?

Yea, I briefly considered that when I added the timestamp format
option.  I didn't bother because it was a single option and I figured
most frontends start git-fast-import directly.  But with this being
added a "format pragrma header thingy" makes a lot of sense.

Since comments are supported we could backdoor it with #pragma or
something like that, so existing files can still be (mostly) parsed
by an earlier git-fast-import.  But I wonder if that is wise given
that some classes of errors would still fail on the older import,
but would work on a newer one.  Might as well just make it a proper
command that would cause an older importer to fail out of the gate.

-- 
Shawn.