have, but ignore, file?

[Ben Finney]

Kyle Nitzsche <kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com> writes:

> Now and then, I want to intentionally change the file and keep that
> new version.
>
> So anyone who gets the branch gets the correct version, and all
> intermediate cruft is auto-ignored.

So the file (I'll call it ‘foo’) has what sounds like a template, that
you want tracked in VCS, and it has a current state, which you don't
want tracked.

What behaviour do you want when Alice commits a new template version of
‘foo’, and Bob merges the changes into his branch?

What should happen when Bob's local changes to ‘foo’ are newer than the
template committed by Alice?

What should happen when Bob's local changes to ‘foo’ are all older than
the template committed by Alice?

One approach I can think of is to ignore the file ‘foo’, but commit a
template file, ‘foo.template’. Then, in the build system for the
project, copy ‘foo.template’ to ‘foo’ when the latter is older.

-- 
 \           “I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I |
  `\        consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no |
_o__)  superhuman authority behind it.” —Albert Einstein, letter, 1953 |
Ben Finney