commit: ignore intent-to-add entries instead of refusingjc/maint-commit-ignore-i-t-a

Originally, "git add -N" was introduced to help users from forgetting to
add new files to the index before they ran "git commit -a".  As an attempt
to help them further so that they do not forget to say "-a", "git commit"
to commit the index as-is was taught to error out, reminding the user that
they may have forgotten to add the final contents of the paths before
running the command.

This turned out to be a false "safety" that is useless.  If the user made
changes to already tracked paths and paths added with "git add -N", and
then ran "git add" to register the final contents of the paths added with
"git add -N", "git commit" will happily create a commit out of the index,
without including the local changes made to the already tracked paths. It
was not a useful "safety" measure to prevent "forgetful" mistakes from
happening.

It turns out that this behaviour is not just a useless false "safety", but
actively hurts use cases of "git add -N" that were discovered later and
have become popular, namely, to tell Git to be aware of these paths added
by "git add -N", so that commands like "git status" and "git diff" would
include them in their output, even though the user is not interested in
including them in the next commit they are going to make.

Fix this ancient UI mistake, and instead make a commit from the index
ignoring the paths added by "git add -N" without adding real contents.

Based on the work by Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy, and helped by injection of
sanity from Jonathan Nieder and others on the Git mailing list.

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

2 files changed, 8 insertions, 6 deletions

diff --git a/cache-tree.c b/cache-tree.c
index f755590da8..ce0d0e3ecc 100644
--- a/cache-tree.c
+++ b/cache-tree.c
@@ -158,7 +158,7 @@ static int verify_cache(struct cache_entry **cache,
 	funny = 0;
 	for (i = 0; i < entries; i++) {
 		struct cache_entry *ce = cache[i];
-		if (ce_stage(ce) || (ce->ce_flags & CE_INTENT_TO_ADD)) {
+		if (ce_stage(ce)) {
 			if (10 < ++funny) {
 				fprintf(stderr, "...\n");
 				break;
@@ -336,8 +336,8 @@ static int update_one(struct cache_tree *it,
 				mode, sha1_to_hex(sha1), entlen+baselen, path);
 		}
 
-		if (ce->ce_flags & CE_REMOVE)
-			continue; /* entry being removed */
+		if (ce->ce_flags & (CE_REMOVE | CE_INTENT_TO_ADD))
+			continue; /* entry being removed or placeholder */
 
 		strbuf_grow(&buffer, entlen + 100);
 		strbuf_addf(&buffer, "%o %.*s%c", mode, entlen, path + baselen, '\0');
diff --git a/t/t2203-add-intent.sh b/t/t2203-add-intent.sh
index 25435290a7..ec35409f9c 100755
--- a/t/t2203-add-intent.sh
+++ b/t/t2203-add-intent.sh
@@ -32,7 +32,7 @@ test_expect_success 'intent to add does not clobber existing paths' '
 	! grep "$empty" actual
 '
 
-test_expect_success 'cannot commit with i-t-a entry' '
+test_expect_success 'i-t-a entry is simply ignored' '
 	test_tick &&
 	git commit -a -m initial &&
 	git reset --hard &&
@@ -41,12 +41,14 @@ test_expect_success 'cannot commit with i-t-a entry' '
 	echo frotz >nitfol &&
 	git add rezrov &&
 	git add -N nitfol &&
-	test_must_fail git commit -m initial
+	git commit -m second &&
+	test $(git ls-tree HEAD -- nitfol | wc -l) = 0 &&
+	test $(git diff --name-only HEAD -- nitfol | wc -l) = 1
 '
 
 test_expect_success 'can commit with an unrelated i-t-a entry in index' '
 	git reset --hard &&
-	echo xyzzy >rezrov &&
+	echo bozbar >rezrov &&
 	echo frotz >nitfol &&
 	git add rezrov &&
 	git add -N nitfol &&