Re: [RFC] Define "precious" attribute and support it in `git clean`

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 10:07:08AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org> writes:
> 
> > While I'd love for it to default to that and require an extra option to
> > clean away precious files, I'd expect that that would break people's
> > workflows and finger memory. If someone expects `git clean -x -d -f` to
> > clean away everything, including `.config`, and then it leaves some
> > files in place, that seems likely to cause problems. (Leaving aside that
> > it might break scripted workflows.)
> 
> I thought the point of introducing the new "precious" class of
> paths, in addition to the current "tracked", "ignored, untracked,
> and expendable", "not ignored and untracked", is so that people can
> do "git clean -x -d -f" and expect the ".config" that is marked as
> "precious" to stay.  Before their Git learned the precious class, if
> they marked ".config" as "ignored, untracked, and expendable", then
> such an invocation of "clean" would have removed it, but if they add
> it to the new "precious" class, their expectation ought to be that
> precious ones are not removed, no?  Otherwise I am not quite sure
> what the point of adding such a new protection is.

I'd expect a lot of projects to move things *from* the current "ignored"
state to "precious", once "precious" exists. Linux `.config`, for
instance.

That said, I do agree that the ideal behavior is for clean to preserve
precious files by default, and require an extra option to remove
precious files. If you think that doesn't have backwards-compatibility
considerations, then it certainly seems much easier to jump directly to
that behavior.

- Josh Triplett