Re: [RFC] git clean --local

quoted

Would something like git clean --exclude=file-pattern work as a
compromise notion? Files matching the pattern would not be cleaned
regardless of .gitignore or their potential preciousness status
long-term. Multiple repetitions of the --exclude option might be
supportable. I could see that being somewhat useful in scripting.

I think "git clean" already takes "-e", but I am not sure if it is
meant to do what you wrote above.

It does already take --exclude=file-pattern, which is like adding
lines to .gitignore. (W/o -x/-X, that would mean DON'T clean them, but
with -x/-X, it means DO clean them.)

If "git clean" takes a pathspec, perhaps you can give a negative
pathspec to exclude whatever you do not want to get cleaned,
something like

        git clean '*.o' ':!precious.o'

I like this, but I'm also 100% satisfied with Junio's previous suggestion:
    git -c core.excludesFile=/dev/null clean ...