RichiH/vcsh — Issue #16: let's think ~/.gitignore.d through
Author: Dieterbe
Created: 2011-11-26 11:09:12+00:00
State: open

do we really need the bakfiles for seed-gitignore?
some arguments why not:

* if the user invokes this command, he could expect that his files will get overwritten
* user has $HOME/.gitignore.d/* in git anyway (or at least should have)
* if user is going to have a tool automatically maintaining a file, putting manual stuff in there is pointless anyway
* maybe we could add a `-f` flag to force overwrite, but still this doesn't seem like a natural approach (read on).

some arguments in favor

* .bak files can easily be gitignored (although, if he has $HOME/.gitignore.d in git, he uses vcsh to manage it, is there a way to maintain ignore files that are not overridden by git-seedignore?
* maybe the gitignore.d dir should contain for each repo 2 files: .manual and .auto
the autofile can be automatically rewritten by vcsh and needs no backing up, and vcsh wouldn't touch the manual files. it however create a new file .merged, or something which simply contains the sum of both files. (which is basically a work around for git's lack of multiple ignore files)

the latter is maybe the best solution: it removes the need for backupfiles completely, and allows users to maintain their own gitignore rules safely.