Not Possible to switch branch after --skip-worktree

Question

WHAT I WANT TO DO

I have a file which contains sensitive datas so I don\'t want to push content of this file to remote server.

WHAT I DID?

To achiev

Answer 1

Just find one line to do --no-skip-worktree on all files

git ls-files -v | grep "^S" | cut -c 3- | xargs -L1 git update-index --no-skip-worktree

You can easily make a little alias.unhideall with that command :)

Answer 2

Well, this is a cruddy solution, but seems to work reasonably well (though it is only lightly tested):

Create a file named git-checkoutsw somewhere in your PATH, with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
ignored=( $(git ls-files -v | grep "^S " | cut -c3-) )
for x in "${ignored[@]}"; do
  git update-index --no-skip-worktree -- "$x"
done
git checkout -m $@
for x in "${ignored[@]}"; do
  git update-index --skip-worktree -- "$x"
done

The script captures the list of ignored files, unignores them, checks out the new branch with -m (for merge) and whatever other parameters have been specified, and then ignores them again.

Now you can do git checkoutsw instead of git checkout.

Answer 3

I haven't been able to find a neat solution to this, so I'm using a .bat file to run --no-skip-worktree on the affected files. I then stash, switch branch, stash apply, and then use another .bat file to run --skip-worktree on the same files.

It's not nice, but it's the simplest and quickest way I've found so far.

Update: I've run into this problem again so have created a PowerShell script instead of the .bat file mentioned above. It will prompt the user whether they want to skip or no-skip the files. Update the two parameters and you're ready to go:

[string]$repoPath = "C:\Fully\Qualified\Path"
[string[]]$filesToSkip = @(
    "Local/Path/To/File.txt",
    "Local/Path/To/OtherFile.txt"
)

$skipText = Read-Host -Prompt 'Skip files? (y/n)'
$skip = $skipText -like "y"
cd $repoPath
foreach ($file in $filesToSkip)
{
    if($skip)
    {
        Write-Host "Skipping" $file
        git update-index --skip-worktree $file
    }
    else
    {
        Write-Host "No-skipping" $file
        git update-index --no-skip-worktree $file
    }
}

Answer 4

You can enable sparse checkout and add the file there together with adding the skip-worktree flag (if you add the sparse checkout alone it probably will be deleted).

To exclude a file you should put to sparse-checkout file (see git-read-tree manual):

/*
!unwanted

Then it will not be touched at update (so you don't get content of the other branch there, instead preserving your edits). It might be not what you want.

Answer 5

I got the same problem and it boiled down to be casued by incoming changes on the file I wanted to assume-unchanged on.

So if I just do no-assume-unchanged on the file, stash it, checkout the latest version, pop my stash, and assume-unchanged again.

So now I'm able to switch branches again.

Answer 6

Is there a reason to have an empty variant of that file checked in at all? If not

git rm --cached path/to/file
echo 'path/to/file' >> .gitignore
git commit -m'stop tracking path/to/file'

might solve your problem. (Will have to be repeated for each branch that has the file. Or if you don't mind history-rewriting, use git filter-branch to get rid of it in previous commits, too.)