Re: [RFC PATCH] Introduce "precious" file concept

From: "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
To: "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>
Cc: "Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy" <pclouds@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, "Steffen Jost" <jost@tcs.ifi.lmu.de>,
	"Joshua Jensen" <jjensen@workspacewhiz.com>,
	"Per Lundberg" <per.lundberg@hibox.tv>,
	"Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox.com>,
	"Matthieu Moy" <git@matthieu-moy.fr>,
	"Clemens Buchacher" <drizzd@gmx.net>,
	"Holger Hellmuth" <hellmuth@ira.uka.de>,
	"Kevin Ballard" <kevin@sb.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Introduce "precious" file concept
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2018 23:22:09 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20181112232209.GK890086@genre.crustytoothpaste.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <871s7r4wuv.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

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On Sun, Nov 11, 2018 at 01:33:44PM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:
> The users who need protection against git deleting their files the most
> are exactly the sort of users who aren't expert-level enough to
> understand the nuances of how the semantics of .gitignore and "precious"
> are going to interact before git eats their data.
> 
> This is pretty apparent from the bug reports we're getting about
> this. None of them are:
> 
>     "Hey, I 100% understood .gitignore semantics including this one part
>     of the docs where you say you'll do this, but just forgot one day
>     and deleted my work. Can we get some more safety?"
> 
> But rather (with some hyperbole for effect):
> 
>     "ZOMG git deleted my file! Is this a bug??"
> 
> So I think we should have the inverse of this "precious"
> attribute". Just a change to the docs to say that .gitignore doesn't
> imply these eager deletion semantics on tree unpacking anymore, and if
> users want it back they can define a "garbage" attribute
> (s/precious/garbage/).
> 
> That will lose no data, and in the very rare cases where a checkout of
> tracked files would overwrite an ignored pattern, we can just error out
> (as we do with the "Ok to overwrite" branch removed) and tell the user
> to delete the files to proceed.

This is going to totally hose automation.  My last job had files which
might move from tracked to untracked (a file that had become generated),
and long-running CI and build systems would need to be able to check out
one status and switch to the other.  Your proposed change will prevent
those systems from working, whereas they previously did.

I agree that your proposal would have been a better design originally,
but breaking the way automated systems currently work is probably going
to be a dealbreaker.
-- 
brian m. carlson: Houston, Texas, US
OpenPGP: https://keybase.io/bk2204

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