Re: which files are "known to git"?

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>]

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On Mon, 21 May 2018, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
> > On Mon, 21 May 2018, Elijah Newren wrote:
>
> >> Hi Robert,
> >>
> >> I had always assumed prior to your email that 'known to Git'
> >> meant 'tracked' or 'recorded in the index'...
> >
> >   i *know* i've been in this discussion before, but i don't
> > remember where, i *assume* it was on this list, and i recall
> > someone (again, don't remember who) who opined that there are two
> > categories of files that are "known to git":
>
> My understanding was the same as Elijah's.
>
> I would be in favor of a patch that replaces the phrase "known to
> Git" in Git's documentation with something less confusing.

  ironically, the 2nd edition of o'reilly's "version control with git"
uses the phrases "known to Git" and "unknown to Git" on p. 378 (and
nowhere else that i can see):

"Furthermore, for the purposes of this [git clean] command, Git uses a
slightly more conservative concept of under version control.
Specifically, the manual page uses the phrase “files that are unknown
to Git” for a good reason: even files that are mentioned in the
.gitignore and .git/info/exclude files are actually known to Git. They
represent files that are not version controlled, but Git does know
about them. And because those files are called out in the .gitignore
files, they must have some known (to you) behavior that shouldn’t be
disturbed by Git. So Git won’t clean out the ignored files unless you
explicitly request it with the -x option."

  that phrase even occurs in git-produced diagnostic messages such as:

  dir.c: error("pathspec '%s' did not match any file(s) known to git.",

in any event, perhaps the phrase "known to Git" has some value, as
long as it's defined very precisely and used consistently, which it
obviously isn't right now.

rday

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Robert P. J. Day                                 Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA
                  http://crashcourse.ca/dokuwiki

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