In message 45E311C9.4060905@freescale.com you wrote:
I never felt the need for a .gitignore file; mayby you can explain what you need it for?
To keep the output of git-status clean. I need to do a "make clean" in order for git-status to give me meaningful results.
That's what I do, too. What's the problem with that?
Also, you could get used to using the O= option and put the builkd tree in a separate directory, so you don't even have to run "make clean".
And as mentioned before, I see the benefit of the current situation that it clearly shows if "make clean" fails to clean up any files it should.
If git-ls-files were updated to include empty directories, would you be willing to have .gitignore files?
Willing...
To be honest: no. My regular working mode is to use "cg-status" to see what was changed / added etc. before I commit a change. For me it is very convenient when I see any stray files at the same time without need to run any other command.
But I'm willing to listen to arguments. At the moment it's that either I have to run an additional command I didn't need to use before, or you have to run "make clean" or use "O=". I don't see any significant difference of added inconvenience between these two. So I tend to shift the inconvenience to you :-)
However, if you have a *good* reason for using .gitignore files, I will reconsider.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk