Re: git 1.4.0 usability problem

[Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>]

On Sun, Jun 18, 2006 at 09:40:06AM -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Now that kernel 2.6.17 is out, I updated all my repositories to be based 
> against that kernel.  And for each repository I updated, my merge was 
> rejected, due to an error similar to:
> 
> >fatal: Untracked working tree file '.gitignore' would be overwritten by 
> >merge.
> 
> I am only able to merge if I delete files in the working directory, so 
> that git stops complaining on merge.
> 
> This behavior is new with git 1.4.0, which Fedora Extras just added.  I 
> verified that merges work as expected in git 1.3.3, the last version 
> Fedora Extras shipped prior to 1.4.0.
> 
> This behavior is a definite regression, that impacts workflow :(
> 
> Here is how to reproduce:
> 
> git clone -l $url/torvalds/linux-2.6.git tmp-2.6

At this point you have master checked out, and recorded properly in the
index.

> cd tmp-2.6
> cp .git/refs/tags/v2.6.12 .git/refs/heads/tmp
> git checkout -f tmp

Here, you throw that index away, ignore the contents of the working
tree, and checkout tmp.

> git pull . master
> # watch OBVIOUS FAST-FORWARD MERGE complain about untracked
> # working tree files

At this point, you have a working tree containing files leftover from
the checkout of master, but which are totally unknown to the 2.6.12
tree, and so are untracked.  The fast-forward is trying hard not to
overwrite things it shouldn't be messing with, and so complains.

The fix is to drop the "-f" from git checkout, and things should work
correctly.  ("-f" should really not be a normal thing to use. For
switching branches, "git checkout" should be sufficient, and should
result ina working tree that doesn't contain nearly as many potential
conflict sources.

-- 

Ryan Anderson
  sometimes Pug Majere