On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, Linus Torvalds wrote:

quoted text
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2008, david@lang.hm wrote:
>>
>> I see it fairly frequently when switching between different branches of a
>> project.
>
> So, at least for any normal switch, assuming file 'a' doesn't exist in the
> other branch, you really should have a few different cases:
>
> - you have a dirty file, and git should say something like
>
> 	error: You have local changes to 'file'; cannot switch branches.
>
>   because it refuses to modify the file to match the other branch (which
>   includes removing it) if it doesn't match the index.
>
>   So this case shouldn't leave anything behind.
>
> - You have that extra file, but it's not in the index.
>
>   If it's in your current HEAD, we should still notice it with something
>   like:
>
> 	error: Untracked working tree file 'tree' would be removed by merge.
>
>   because now it's untracked (not in the index), but the switching
>   between branches tries to essentially "apply" the difference between
>   your current HEAD and the new branch, and finds that the difference
>   involves removing a file that git isn't tracking.

one place that I know I've run into it frequently is in an internal 
project that I did not properly setup .gitignore and did "git add ." and 
"git commit -a" to. that projects repository contains the compiled 
binaries and I frequently get these errors when switching trees.

that sounds like the first case.

I've seen discussion of a new sequencer functionality, would it allow me 
to define a .gitignore file and re-create the repository as if that file 
had existed all along?

David Lang

quoted text
> See?
>
> HOWEVER.
>
> If you're used to doing "git checkout -f" or "git reset --hard", both of
> those checks are just ignored. After all, you asked for a forced switch.
>
> And at least in the second case, what I think happens is that git won't
> remove the file it doesn't know about, so you'll have a "turd" left
> around.
>
> So yes, you can certainly get these kinds of left-overs, but they really
> should be only happening if you "force" something. Do you do that often?
>
> 			Linus
>
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