Re: Untracked working tree files

On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:

quoted

I see it fairly frequently when switching between different branches of a
project.

So, at least for any normal switch, assuming file 'a' doesn't exist in the
other branch, you really should have a few different cases:

- you have a dirty file, and git should say something like

	error: You have local changes to 'file'; cannot switch branches.

  because it refuses to modify the file to match the other branch (which
  includes removing it) if it doesn't match the index.

  So this case shouldn't leave anything behind.

- You have that extra file, but it's not in the index.

  If it's in your current HEAD, we should still notice it with something
  like:

	error: Untracked working tree file 'tree' would be removed by merge.

  because now it's untracked (not in the index), but the switching
  between branches tries to essentially "apply" the difference between
  your current HEAD and the new branch, and finds that the difference
  involves removing a file that git isn't tracking.

one place that I know I've run into it frequently is in an internal 
project that I did not properly setup .gitignore and did "git add ." and 
"git commit -a" to. that projects repository contains the compiled 
binaries and I frequently get these errors when switching trees.

that sounds like the first case.

I've seen discussion of a new sequencer functionality, would it allow me 
to define a .gitignore file and re-create the repository as if that file 
had existed all along?

David Lang

See?

HOWEVER.

If you're used to doing "git checkout -f" or "git reset --hard", both of
those checks are just ignored. After all, you asked for a forced switch.

And at least in the second case, what I think happens is that git won't
remove the file it doesn't know about, so you'll have a "turd" left
around.

So yes, you can certainly get these kinds of left-overs, but they really
should be only happening if you "force" something. Do you do that often?

			Linus