Re: [PATCH 2/2] checkout: die() on ambiguous tracking branches

From: Alexandr Miloslavskiy <alexandr.miloslavskiy@syntevo.com>
Date: Nov 27, 2019, 16:09 UTC
Message-ID: <08b8acc1-6925-ad40-faa2-88a16b8d135f@syntevo.com>
In-Reply-To: <87v9r5nx3w.fsf@evledraar.gmail.com>

On 27.11.2019 16:43, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote:

Show 24 quoted lines

> I'll reserve judgement on whether we really should do this for now, my
> current opinion on the matter is undefined as I haven't re-paged this
> behavior of checkout into my brain.
> 
> But a giant red flag here for me is that you say "I understand that this
> was never intended".
> 
> Just from a cursory look at this that's not true, for better or worse it
> *is* intended behavior. Most of the code you're moving around here is
> what I added in ad8d5104b4 ("checkout: add advice for ambiguous
> "checkout <branch>"", 2018-06-05), and the very start of that commit
> message refers to the checkout documentation we have that explicitly
> documents this edge case.
> 
> Digging a bit further reveals that we've had this behavior (again,
> intended, not emergent) since 70c9ac2f19 ("DWIM "git checkout frotz" to
> "git checkout -b frotz origin/frotz"", 2009-10-18), and had it
> documented since 00bb4378c7 ("Documentation/git-checkout.txt: document
> 70c9ac2 behavior", 2012-12-17).
> 
> So at the very least I'd say you need a v2 where you amend the relevant
> docs & commit message to make a case to the effect of "we've had this
> since 2009, but it was never really all that important etc.".
>

I'm sorry, can you please clarify?

My patch addresses the situation where there are *multiple* remote candidates *and* a file with the same name.

My feeling is that in this case, reverting a file is an unintended surprise.

I understand previous patches this way:
ad8d5104 - patch series is mostly for "if there are *multiple* remotes,
            disambiguate via checkout.defaultRemote". This essentially
            converts the case of multiple remotes into a single remote.
            However, this also semi-documents what I'm now preventing.
            Was that really intended?
70c9ac2f - if there is *one* remote, DWIM it.
            This isn't what I'm changing.
be4908f1 - if there is *one* remote *and* file, die().
            This is what I'm extending further.

If the prevented behavior is documented, could you please quote it explicitly?

> Such a change should also be changing the docs etc. added in 8d7b558bae
> ("checkout & worktree: introduce checkout.defaultRemote",
> 2018-06-05). With this series our docs don't make a lot of sense anymore
> & don't describe the behavior with the patches applied.

To my understanding, my patch doesn't affect those pieces of docs? Please correct me if I'm wrong.