Re: which files are "known to git"?

On Mon, 21 May 2018, Elijah Newren wrote:

Hi Robert,

I had always assumed prior to your email that 'known to Git' meant
'tracked' or 'recorded in the index'.  However, a quick `git grep -i
known.to.git` shows that we're actually not consistent by what we
mean with this phrase.  A little test setup:

  $ echo ignoreme >>.gitignore
  $ git add .gitignore
  $ git commit -m ignoreme
  $ touch ignoreme
  $ git ls-files -o
  ignoreme
  $ git ls-files -o --exclude-standard
  $

quoted

From Documentation/git-clean.txt:

    Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the `-x`
    option is specified, ignored files are also removed.

  This implies that ignored files are not 'unknown to Git', or fixing the
  double negative, that ignored files are 'known to Git':
  $ git clean -n
  $ git clean -nx
  Would remove ignoreme
  $

  uh oh ... i'm just now remembering a discussion once upon a time
where this wasn't simply a double negative. IIRC (and someone else
help me out here), "known to git" also meant known *not* to be tracked
or something like that (as in, ignored files).

  anyone remember that conversation?

rday