Re: Managing multiple branches in git

On Jun 2, 2009, at 4:39 PM, Tom Lane wrote:

> "David E. Wheeler" <david@kineticode.com> writes:
>> Does that make sense?
>
> Maybe, but it still seems messy, brute force, and error-prone.
>
> I can't escape the feeling that we're missing something basic here.
> It's allegedly one of git's great strengths that it allows you to
> easily
> and quickly switch your attention among multiple development branches.
> Well, so it does, if you haven't got any derived files to rebuild.
> But rebuilding the Linux kernel is hardly a zero-cost operation,
> so how have Linus and co failed to notice this problem?  There
> must be some trick they're using that I haven't heard about, or
> they'd not be nearly so pleased with git.

Yeah, it's a good question. Someone must know…

I tried an experiment with .gitignore and derived files in my pgtap
repository. I ran `make` to generate ignored files, then switched to a
different branch. The derived files from master were still there,
which is no good. Perhaps there's a way to have git ignore derived
files but store them for particular branches?

Best,

David