Re: which files are "known to git"?

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>]

On Mon, 21 May 2018, Elijah Newren wrote:

> Hi Robert,

> I had always assumed prior to your email that 'known to Git' meant
> 'tracked' or 'recorded in the index'.  However, a quick `git grep -i
> known.to.git` shows that we're actually not consistent by what we
> mean with this phrase.  A little test setup:
>
>   $ echo ignoreme >>.gitignore
>   $ git add .gitignore
>   $ git commit -m ignoreme
>   $ touch ignoreme
>   $ git ls-files -o
>   ignoreme
>   $ git ls-files -o --exclude-standard
>   $
>
> >From Documentation/git-clean.txt:
>
>     Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the `-x`
>     option is specified, ignored files are also removed.
>
>   This implies that ignored files are not 'unknown to Git', or fixing the
>   double negative, that ignored files are 'known to Git':
>   $ git clean -n
>   $ git clean -nx
>   Would remove ignoreme
>   $

  uh oh ... i'm just now remembering a discussion once upon a time
where this wasn't simply a double negative. IIRC (and someone else
help me out here), "known to git" also meant known *not* to be tracked
or something like that (as in, ignored files).

  anyone remember that conversation?

rday