Is it a bad idea to ignore *.orig files using an hgignore?

Question

If so, why? With git, these only showed up for me after resolving conflicts. However with hg and sourcetree, discarding changes creates .orig files. I know there is a command to discard without saving .orig files, but in lieu of that command switch, is there anything dangerous about adding *.orig to an hgignore?

Answer 1

There is no reason why ignoring the orig files would be an issue, other than having your repo polluted with them without you knowing. In environments where the temporary and binary files appear as compilation artifacts, having a few more files is not a big deal.

Personally, I like to keep them visible so that I can delete these unversioned files myself after a conflicting merge, or instead consult them in case something wrong happens, but as a matter of fact, I don't remember doing so lately. I might just take this suggestion up myself!