Re: [RFC] git clean --local

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Cameron Boehmer [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

1) add a new flag
-l, --local
    Do not consult git config --global core.excludesFile in
determining what files git ignores. This is useful in conjunction with
-x/-X to preserve user files while removing build artifacts.

...
But it might be useful as an option that affects any "git" command,
e.g. "git --local-config-only clean".  I dunno.

If you only want to say "there is no global excludes file", perhaps

    $ git -c core.excludesFile=/dev/null clean -x

may be sufficient, so for that particular use case, there is no need
to introduce a new command, I'd think.

In the longer term, however, I think we would want to introduce a
distinction among ignored files---we only support "ignored and
expendable" class, but not "ignored but precious" class.  With the
latter class introduced, it would make sense for "git clean -x/-X"
to notice that a path is ignored but precious and keep it.  If a
dir/foo is ignored, dir/bar is tracked in commit A that is currently
checked out, and there is no dir/ directory in commit B, checking
out commit B would remove dir/foo (because the last tracked file in
the directory goes away and all remaining files in the directory
would be ignored but expendable).  But if we introduced a new
"ignored but precious" class and made dir/foo a member of such a
class, then you will be prevented from checkout out B until you do
something about dir/foo that is now "precious".