A common scenario are some IDEs that can't help themselves but put their files in the root of the project, but you don't want any ide related files to be managed by the repository because you use an ide-independent build system, or because some of those files are local settings that shouldn't live in the repository.

However, being able to clean out temporary test files and such without deleting the ide files (which can contain local settings that are annoying to recreate) would be useful.

Git's approach is that by default, git clean honors .gitignore but provides an option to force it to clean ignored files as well.

anonymous added on 2010-10-15 07:54:00:
By reading the documentation I thought that clean would honor ignore-glob.

Excerpt from help: Delete all "extra" files in the source tree. "Extra" files are files that are not officially part of the checkout. See also the "extra" command.

For me this implies that clean deletes everything that is shown in extras (by the way, there is a typo, the command is extras :). For me the natural thing would be to honor ignore-glob by default, as git does. Otherwise, an option to do so would be really useful.

anonymous claiming to be viric added on 2010-12-20 08:31:53:
There was a patch sent to the list recently. I vote for applying it, if it solves the problem.

I like ignore-glob being honored on fossil clean.