Re: [PATCH 0/2] Add --no-filters option to git-add

On 2021-02-19 at 18:12:11, Andrej Shadura via GitGitGadget wrote:

It is possible for a user to disable attribute-based filtering when
committing by doing one of the following:

 * Create .git/info/attributes unapplying all possible transforming
   attributes.
 * Use git hash-object and git update-index to stage files manually.

Doing the former requires keeping an up-to-date list of all attributes which
can transform files when committing or checking out. Doing the latter is
difficult, error-prone and slow when done from scripts.

Instead, similarly to git hash-object, --no-filter can be added to git add
to enable temporarily disabling filtering in an easy to use way.

These patches:

 * Add new flag ADD_CACHE_RAW to add_to_index()
 * Add new flag HASH_RAW to index_fd()
 * Make git hash-object use the new HASH_RAW flag for consistency
 * Add tests for the new git-add option.

I'm interested in your use cases here.  While I agree that this is an
interesting feature, it also means that practically, a user who checks
out a file that's added this way may find that git status marks it as
perpetually modified until a properly cleaned version is committed.
Moreover, even "git reset --hard" won't fix this situation.

We see this problem extremely frequently with Git LFS where people
change the .gitattributes file but don't run "git add --renormalize ."
and then end up with this problem.  However, it's not limited to Git LFS
in particular; anything that uses filters, working tree encodings, or
end of line attributes can be affected.

So I think that while this might be a useful escape hatch for users, I
definitely want to see a compelling rationale for it and a big warning
in the documentation and an update to the relevant entry in the Git FAQ
before we accept such a patch.
-- 
brian m. carlson (he/him or they/them)
Houston, Texas, US