Can I ignore changes to files that are already part of the tree?

[BatmanAoD]

I have some files that are part of my git repo, and which, due to some legacy testing setup that I haven't had time to untangle yet, are changed every time I run my unit tests; but those updates should not actually be committed.

I've tried adding the files to .gitignore, but jj still records the changes, which makes sense since git does too. (I can't actually get git to ignore the files even using --skip-worktree or --assume-unchanged, which is...troubling.) I don't think the new auto-track option would solve this since it's a glob pattern so it can't easily be negated, and I also don't know whether it applies only to new files or to already-tracked files (the release notes just link to the issue, and I didn't read the whole conversation there).

So is there any way to tell jj "ignore changes to these files by default"?

[martinvonz]

No, we don't have such a feature. It could be implemented in a similar way as the auto-track option, if we think it's worth the added complexity.

[BatmanAoD]

I'll think about it and post here again if I run into a situation that seems more legitimate than what I described above.

[anka-213]

Another situation where I use --skip-worktree is when I want to have local changes to a config file that doesn't have support for a .local.cfg version or similar. Is there a standard solution to this?

[jennings]

@anka-213 See this FAQ: How can I avoid committing my local-only changes to tracked files?.

The trick is to keep your local-only change in a commit "to the side of" instead of "on top of" the branch you're working on.

[scott2000]

You could maybe use a sparse working copy to manually exclude the files from snapshotting, but if any new files are added in any parent directory of the files, then they would have to be manually added to the sparse checkout (if I understand correctly).

[psowinski]

Please consider implementing something like --assume-unchanged, there are real scenarios when we don't want to commit a file and keeping changes aside is not always convenient