From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Zack Brown Subject: Re: dotfile support Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 06:56:46 -0800 Message-ID: <20051207145646.GA9207@tumblerings.org> References: <20050416230058.GA10983@ucw.cz> <118833cc05041618017fb32a2@mail.gmail.com> <20050416183023.0b27b3a4.pj@sgi.com> <42620092.9040402@dwheeler.com> <42628D1B.3000207@dwheeler.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: Linus Torvalds , Paul Jackson , Morten Welinder , mj@ucw.cz, git@vger.kernel.org X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Wed Dec 07 16:02:50 2005 Return-path: Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by ciao.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1Ek0jb-0008DO-1j for gcvg-git@gmane.org; Wed, 07 Dec 2005 15:57:31 +0100 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751113AbVLGO51 (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 Dec 2005 09:57:27 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751116AbVLGO51 (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 Dec 2005 09:57:27 -0500 Received: from dsl092-000-086.sfo1.dsl.speakeasy.net ([66.92.0.86]:10962 "EHLO tumblerings.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751113AbVLGO51 (ORCPT ); Wed, 7 Dec 2005 09:57:27 -0500 Received: from zbrown by tumblerings.org with local (Exim 4.54) id 1Ek0is-0002q6-SI; Wed, 07 Dec 2005 06:56:46 -0800 To: "David A. Wheeler" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <42628D1B.3000207@dwheeler.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: Hi, What's the status of dotfile support? I can only find one thread that really discusses the issue: On Sun, Apr 17, 2005 at 12:21:47PM -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote: > Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > >On Sun, 17 Apr 2005, David A. Wheeler wrote: > > > ... > >Also, I made a design decision that git only cares about non-dotfiles. Git > >literally never sees or looks at _anything_ that starts with a ".". I > >think that's absolutely the right thing to do for an SCM (if you hide your > >files, I really don't think you should expect the SCM to see it), but it's > >obviously not the right thing for a backup thing. > > Again, a command line flag or config file entry could change that > in the future, if desired. So this is a decision that could be > changed later... the best kind of decision :-). Personally I like dotfile support, and I compare it to the language encoding issue for filenames. Linus says we should treat filenames as binary data, and thus it won't matter what characters someone uses. I agree completely, but by not supporting dotfiles, we're creating a big exception, in that if a filename begins with a dot, we treat it in a much different way, in fact we ignore it completely. In the above quote, Linus says "if you hide your files, I really don't think you should expect the SCM to see it". But what about the case where the user is not the one choosing to create dotfiles? If I want to put a bunch of config files for various apps into a git repository, I don't get to pick their names in many cases, at least not without changing the way I invoke my apps (or the scripts that do it for me). But it's still worthwhile to have those config files in version control. It makes it much easier to experiment with new tools, recover from my mistakes, and share my successes with others. So that's my pitch: Leaving out dotfile support seems like it creates an unnecessary limitation that eliminates some valid uses of git. Be well, Zack > > --- David A. Wheeler > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html -- Zack Brown