[RFC] Removing deleted files after checkout

[Carl Baldwin <cnb@fc.hp.com>]

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Hello,

I recently started using git to revision control the source for my
web-page.  I wrote a post-update hook to checkout the files when I push
to the 'live' repository.

In this particular context I decided that it was important to me to remove
deleted files after checking out the new HEAD.  I accomplished this by running
git-ls-files before and after the checkout.

Is there a better way?  Could there be some way built into git to easily
find out what files dissappear when replacing the current index with one
from a new tree?  Is there already?  The behavior of git should NOT
change to delete these files but I would argue that some way should
exist to query what files disappeared if removing them is desired.

Here is some code that I wrote for this.  It feels a bit hackish to me but I
couldn't think of anything better.  Comments and criticism are welcome.

#!/bin/sh

# HEAD changed so checkout the new HEAD deleted any files that should no longer
# be around.
oldlist=$(tempfile)
newlist=$(tempfile)
removedlist=$(tempfile)

git-ls-files | sort -r > $oldlist
git-checkout-script -f
git-ls-files | sort -r > $newlist

diff -u $oldlist $newlist |
  tail -n +4 |
  sed -n 's/^-//p' > $removedlist

# Remove each file
cat $removedlist | xargs -rl rm -f
# Remove the directories if empty
cat $removedlist | xargs -rl dirname | xargs -rl rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty

rm -f $oldlist $newlist $removedlist

# --- snip ---

If you are interested I attached the full post-update hook script that I
actually use to do this.  Again, comments are welcome.

Thanks,
Carl

-- 
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 Carl Baldwin                        Systems VLSI Laboratory
 Hewlett Packard Company
 MS 88                               work: 970 898-1523
 3404 E. Harmony Rd.                 work: Carl.N.Baldwin@hp.com
 Fort Collins, CO 80525              home: Carl@ecBaldwin.net
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#!/bin/sh

export PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin

# cd to the root of the project directory (assume one dir up from GIT_DIR)
cd $GIT_DIR/..
unset GIT_DIR

# Set up some temporary files and a trap to delete them
oldlist=$(tempfile)
newlist=$(tempfile)
removelist=$(tempfile)
trap "rm -f $oldlist $newlist $removelist" 0 1 2 3 15

# Get list of files from the current index
git-ls-files | sort -r > $oldlist

# Checkout the index to the working directory
git-checkout-script -f

# Get list of files from the current (new) index
git-ls-files | sort -r > $newlist

# Use diff to determine which files to remove from the working copy
diff -u $oldlist $newlist |
  tail -n +4 |
  sed -n 's/^-//p' > $removelist

cat $removelist | xargs -rl rm -f
cat $removelist | xargs -rl dirname | xargs -rl rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty