myhosts and whitelist ignored by .gitignore

The myhosts and whitelist files seem to have been originally created and checked in to the repo, so git doesn’t follow the .gitignore file for those two files. Should those be removed from the cache and recommitted, with instructions on how to create those files if you need them? As it exists now, the README is somewhat confusing, since it states that those files aren’t tracked but they technically still are.

In addition, should the hosts file itself be removed from the cache and added to the .gitignore file as well? As it exists now, if I were to add entries to the myhosts file, they’ll end up getting committed to the base hosts file once it’s created. You could potentially get burned by that and need to purge your fork. I’ve removed the hosts file from my fork to address that, but that now causes merge conflicts every time I pull.

[gfyoung]

Proposal (in addition to .gitignore-ing them properly):

• Rename all of those files to [filename].example.
• When running the Python update script, if [filename] does not exist in the file directory, copy over [filename].example to [filename]

Thoughts?

cc @StevenBlack

xref: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1274057/how-to-make-git-forget-about-a-file-that-was-tracked-but-is-now-in-gitignore

[StevenBlack]

@gfyoung I think this is a good idea.