Re: CM 1.1 git question

[Maximilian Albert]

2009/2/19 Jonathan Kulp <address@hidden>:

> Thanks Carl & Maximilian for this help.  I've got it going now.  At the
> moment I don't see all the advantages of it for this project but I'm getting
> used to the git commands and conventions at least.

As I said, I also use git to track a lot of "ordinary" work, even if
it only consists in writing a single large text file. Normally I don't
need git's functionality and it just feels like a tiny bit of extra
work. But the biggest advantage is that it kind of "frees the mind".
You just don't need to worry about "should I better formulate the
passage in this or in that way?". You just do it one way and if it
turns out to be bad (and if you have committed your stuff in logical
chunks) then you go back to an earlier revision and start over. The
really good thing is that content doesn't get lost and you can always
revive it.

>  It's a big lilypond-book
> project so it has tons of extra files that get created when I compile and
> I'm not sure if I want git tracking all those or not.

No, you don't (since you don't edit them directly). Similarly, you
wouldn't want to track object files in a software project - you only
keep track of the source files.

>  It seems unnecessary to track anything but the source code files.

Correct.

> After I compile, though, and
> then do "git status" I get an enormous number of untracked files created
> since the last commit.

You should create a file called ".gitignore" (note the initial dot) in
the toplevel directory of the source tree which is tracked by git. In
there you list all the files which you don't want to be tracked. You
can use asterisks as well (as in "*.txt"). Then git will ignore these
files and only show the status of the remaining ones.

Cheers,
Max