How do I get jj to track an ignored file?

[lstngr]

In #4727, an explanation is provided to get jj to untrack files that have newly been added to .gitignore.
Suppose I'm explicitly trying to track a file that is currently ignored:

jj git init .
echo '*.log' > .gitignore
touch test.log
jj file track test.log
jj st

Unfortunately, jj only reports .gitignore as an added file and ignores my instruction to track test.log.

In Git, I would resort to git add --force, but I couldn't find a similar option with jj.

[martinvonz]

I think jj file track test.log is the way, it's just not implemented yet (#2837).

[arogozhnikov]

based on #7900, I think it is jj file track --include-ignored <file>, merged, but not released yet

[joyously]

I am still opposed to the concept of a file being both ignored and tracked. Isn't that an example of Git's poor UX? Why do we want to propagate it?

[arogozhnikov]

Being ignored and tracked - I don't know.
Being ignored and checked in - is a critical usecase for me - as it allows to create snapshot of code + artifacts alongside. I use automated scripts to create these snapshots.

[martinvonz]

Users can add custom ignores. If I add README.md to my set of ignored paths, I guess you're saying that if I work in a project that has such a file, then it will be become removed from the working copy next time it's snapshotted? That might work but I haven't thought much about it.

I think it will be hard to implement in a performant way in general because I could add an ignore pattern saying to ignore all files ending in ~. Then all such files should ideally be untracked the next time I run jj in a repo. That will be expensive in the Google repo at least.

[arogozhnikov]

I guess you're saying that if I work in a project that has such a file, then it will be become removed from the working copy next time it's snapshotted

I think so.

As for my scenario, imagine adding some artifacts (like resolved configuration files) in a github tag. They aren't tracked during usual work, but for important revisions of system these artifacts are available in source tree and diff-able. I don't plan to modify these files later as they are artifacts.

[lstngr]

In case it helps anyone finding this question, I resorted to manually specifying exceptions in my .gitignore (this takes about the same effort as git add --force while being a bit more clunky),

# .gitignore
*.log
!specific-log-i-want-to-track.log

[arogozhnikov]

I've found this to be surprisingly unautomatable - when script modified gitignore, jj does not immediately adds 'ungitignored file'. When done manually, it somehow works. jj file track . does not help either 🤷 .

[thomasa88]

Could it help doing jj debug snapshot after modifying the file?
But I guess any jj command should have snapshotted the repo 🤔