Re: Tracking the untracked

[Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch>]

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Geoff Russell wrote:
> Bug or feature? I don't know.

Feature.

> On the master branch I have some untracked files e.g., object modules,
> executables.
> 
> I create a branch B1 and add+commit the untracked files.
> 
> When I switch back to the master (git checkout master), the untracked
> files are no longer where I left them.
[...]
> One solution would be to have a class of files that is "unversioned
> but tracked".

Note that "versioned" and "tracked" mean the same thing in Git --
both denote the class of files it cares about.

Your build products became tracked (w.r.t. the then-state of the
repository, on branch B1) the second you added them to the index with
'git add'.  Git then cares about them, and among many other things
will look at them whenever you change branches.  Since they're not
present in the target branch 'master', they are removed from the work
tree.

> Basically, I'm trying to find a way of having a huge bunch of stuff in
> my repository and
> tracked, but which doesn't get pushed to the central program repository .. which
> has always just been source for us .. I figured I could stick it on a
> branch which doesn't get pushed.
> But that doesn't work for the reason mentioned.

Most people just put their build products in .gitignore so that they
stop showing up under "untracked files" in 'git status'.  (They'll
still be untracked!)

Of course this means the object files for source that actually changed
between the branches have to be rebuilt.  However, Git takes great
care to not touch any source files that are the same, so that the
builds are usually quite fast even after a branch switch.

-- 
Thomas Rast
trast@{inf,student}.ethz.ch

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