Re: which files are "known to git"?

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

On Mon, 21 May 2018, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > 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'...
> >
> >   i *know* i've been in this discussion before, but i don't
> > remember where, i *assume* it was on this list, and i recall
> > someone (again, don't remember who) who opined that there are two
> > categories of files that are "known to git":
>
> My understanding was the same as Elijah's.
>
> I would be in favor of a patch that replaces the phrase "known to
> Git" in Git's documentation with something less confusing.

  first, i want to apologize to everyone for opening this apparent can
of worms. (it's victoria day here in canada, and i intended to spend
it just puttering around with git-related minutiae, not encouraging
thought-provoking questions about the fundamental nature of git.)

  i did a quick search for that phrase in the current code base and
came up with:

builtin/difftool.c:		/* The symlink is unknown to Git so read from the filesystem */
dir.c:		error("pathspec '%s' did not match any file(s) known to git.",
Documentation/git-rm.txt:removes only the paths that are known to Git.  Giving the name of
Documentation/git-commit.txt:   be known to Git);
Documentation/user-manual.txt:error: pathspec '261dfac35cb99d380eb966e102c1197139f7fa24' did not match any file(s) known to git.
Documentation/gitattributes.txt:	Notice all types of potential whitespace errors known to Git.
Documentation/git-clean.txt:Normally, only files unknown to Git are removed, but if the `-x`
Documentation/RelNotes/1.8.2.1.txt: * The code to keep track of what directory names are known to Git on
Documentation/RelNotes/1.8.1.6.txt: * The code to keep track of what directory names are known to Git on
Documentation/RelNotes/2.9.0.txt:   known to Git.  They have been taught to do the normalization.
Documentation/RelNotes/2.8.4.txt:   known to Git.  They have been taught to do the normalization.
Documentation/RelNotes/1.8.3.txt: * The code to keep track of what directory names are known to Git on
t/t3005-ls-files-relative.sh:			echo "error: pathspec $sq$f$sq did not match any file(s) known to git."
t/t3005-ls-files-relative.sh:			echo "error: pathspec $sq$f$sq did not match any file(s) known to git."

so it's not like there's a *ton* of that, but still enough to want to
get it right. should there be a precise definition for the phrase
"known to git", or should that phrase simply be banned/replaced? i
have no idea, open to suggestions.

rday