From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:14:24 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] git checkout --nodwim
Message-ID: <20091026221424.GA28184@sigio.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <32541b130910261501n32046cc5s12283a8e3981d04e@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 06:01:29PM -0400, Avery Pennarun wrote:

> > It's git-update-ref.
> 
> That would be similar to git commit, not git checkout, right?  Oh
> wait, I see the confusion: git checkout does two things.  It switches
> branches, and it checks out files from the index into the work tree.
> I meant the latter meaning.

Er, sorry, yes. It should be "git symbolic-ref", of course, to change
HEAD, and then probably read-tree and checkout-index. I was just not
thinking when I wrote the other message (hopefully I am doing so now).

> > Consider "git commit", for example. Does anyone
> > actually script around "write-tree" and "commit-tree" these days, or do
> > they just script around "git commit"?
> 
> Oh, I use those all the time.  They're awesome!  It allows you to
> create commits without having a working tree, which lets me do very
> interesting tricks.  git-subtree uses this heavily.
> 
> I'm probably a weirdo, though.

OK, I should have phrased my statement differently (see, I told you I
wasn't thinking). Yes, there are reasons to script around low-level
building blocks, when you don't want the assumptions associated with the
higher level. But I'm sure there are tons of scripts that munge some
files in a worktree, followed by "git add -A; git commit -m 'automagic
update'". And in that case, nobody would script around "commit-tree"
because it's a lot more work.

-Peff