Re: git refuses to switch to older branches

[fork0@t-online.de (Alex Riesen)]

Junio C Hamano, Sun, Aug 20, 2006 00:39:20 +0200:
> Martin Waitz <tali@admingilde.org> writes:
> 
> > This safety measure is quite useful normally, but for files that are
> > explicitly marked as to-be-ignored it should not be neccessary.
> >
> > But all the code that handles .gitignore is only used by ls-files now.
> > Does it make sense to add exclude handling to unpack-trees.c, too?
> 
> In principle, I am not opposed to the idea of making read-tree
> take the ignore information into consideration.
> 
> But I would suggest you to be _extremely_ careful if you want to

It should be optional. And off by default, people already have got
scripts depending on this behaviour (well, I have).

> try this.  I do not have an example offhand, but I would not be
> surprised at all if there is a valid use case where it is useful
> to have a pattern that matches a tracked file in .gitignore
> file.
> 

Ignored directory and but some files/subdirectories in it are tracked,
because this is temporary or externally changed data (I have both
examples).