Re: [PATCH v3 3/4] doc: dissuade users from trying to ignore tracked files

[off-list ref] writes:

On November 2, 2019 3:26 PM, brian m. carlson wrote:

quoted

It is quite common for users to want to ignore the changes to a file that Git
tracks.  Common scenarios for this case are IDE settings and configuration
files, which should generally not be tracked and possibly generated from
tracked files using a templating mechanism.

However, users learn about the assume-unchanged and skip-worktree bits
and try to use them to do this anyway.  This is problematic, because when
these bits are set, many operations behave as the user expects, but they
usually do not help when git checkout needs to replace a file.

[...]

Just noodling about a potential solution. If we assume the use case that
files are modified by an IDE that have no real relevance, but should not
interfere with other git operations including checkout...

What if we introduce something like .gitignore.changes, with the same syntax
as .gitignore. The difference is files listed in this file will not show in
`git status` (or could show as "changes ignored" with an option to enable
that. The only way to have the changes considered would be `git add -f`, so
`git add .` and `git commit -a` would not pick up the changes.

[...]

I think it would be better and easier to add new attribute and use
.gitattributes instead of a new .gitignore.changes (and its
per-repository, per-user and system-wide version).

If this idea seems reasonable, it might make a nice small project for
someone, possibly me, if I could unentangle from my current hellish $DAYJOB
project.

I wish you luck.

The fact that it was nod done yet may mean that there are some annoying
corner-cases in the concept, or that it is not commonly useful... or
maybe that is the problem that needs reframing.

Best,
-- 
Jakub Narębski