Re: [RFD] minor frustration in 'git add' pathname completion

Stefan Beller [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

If I were to explicitly ignore that file, then even though I know
whats-cooking.txt is not ignored,

   $ git add whats-coo<HT>

would not offer anything.  I'd be left scratching my head, wondering
if I mistyped the early part of the filename (e.g. "wahts-coo<HT>"?).

Well, git add cannot do anything with either of the files, so why would
it offer to complete to one of them?

In an ideal world it would tell you whats-cooking.txt doesn't need
adding and whats-cooking.txt+ is ignored locally so excluded from
being added.

Exactly my point that you omitted from your quoting ;-)

Because the completion cannot give such an explanation, the
behaviour gives an unnecessary confusion to the user.  If it offered
whats-cooking.txt as a candidate, at least the behaviour would make
sense to the user.  "Doesn't need adding" is quite different from
"must not be added". In other words, "git add A && git add A" does
not hurt, but "git add A~" would because the latter would only makes
you see unnecessary error message ("You need -f if you really mean
it").