Subject: Re: what should "git clean -n -f [-d] [-x] <pattern>" do?

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:34:20 -0800

Sergey Organov <[email-masked]> writes:

> Then how does one figure what "git clean -f -f" will do without actually
> doing it?

I think whoever came up with the bright idea of forcing twice
somehow does a totally different thing from forcing once should be
shot, twice ;-)  It does not mesh well with the idea behind the
clean.requireForce setting to make you explicitly choose either '-f'
or '-n' to express your intent.

I wonder how feasible is it to deprecate that misfeature introduced
with a0f4afbe (clean: require double -f options to nuke nested git
repository and work tree, 2009-06-30) and migrate its users (which
is marked as "This is rarely what the user wants") to a new option,
say, --nested-repo-too so that the "dry-run" version of the
invocations become

    git clean -n
    git clean -n --nested-repo-too

and you can substitute "-n" with "-f" to actually perform it?

Anybody care to come up with a sensible migration plan?

Thanks.