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Discussion on: .gitignore mistake that everyone makes

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mdegans profile image
Michael de Gans

His approach is probably safer. I accidentally commit files all the time that I would rather have excluded, and that's permanent.

Say I'm working on a video app, and I get it pumping out test video, I say "yay!", and commit my changes, only to discover in horror that I've also committed a bunch of test video. No, It shouldn't happen, but developers are people, we run on caffeine, and at the end of the day sometimes we're not 100%.

This would remedy that. I already do it with Docker to avoid accidental giant images. There are security considerations as well. Search GitHub for passwords sometime if you're curious.

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190245 profile image
Dave

There's nothing wrong with mistakes (such as committing the wrong thing), git has powerful history rewriting capabilities.

But really, you can add pre-commit hooks prompting you with checklists etc if you keep making mistakes.

My issue, is that the author suggests that using a tool in the manner that those who made it say you should, is somehow a mistake.

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mdegans profile image
Michael de Gans

Rewriting history breaks stuff, so I try to avoid that, and checklists are nice but it's still possible to miss stuff. As to what's intended, you are probably right, but I tend to prefer allowlists in general, so this is an approach I might consider in the future. I already do it with Python packaging, Docker and more, so why not?

The syntax is flexible enough to allow either, so I'm not sure there is any wrong way. I suppose it's mostly down to personal taste and philosophy.