remove need for git add -f?

[lheagy]

Could we remove the need for the force add of materials here? It makes adding files quite inconvenient... I have a reasonable .gitignore, but then when you use git add -f, it adds all of the files that we don't need (checkpoints, etc). By not seeing anything when running git status because we have to force add everything, it also means it would be easy to forget a data file.

So my current workflow is to force add everything, and then selectively remove files, which is pretty clunky

[chendaniely]

git existing .gitigore file lists:

DO NOT CHANGE THIS
All files are ignored to prevent students/JupyterLab git
extension from accidentally staging things and breaking nbgitpuller

seems like everything is ignored so students don't accidently commit anything in their jlab repo, which would causes issues when nbgitpuller triggers a git pull.

I'm not sure what a good middleground would be to makes things less clunkly?