From: Jan Krüger <jk@jk.gs>
Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2010 20:11:34 GMT
Subject: Re: DWIM "git checkout frotz" to "git checkout -b frotz origin/frotz"
Message-ID: <20100607221134.002ae81a@jk.gs>
In-Reply-To: <20100607182956.GA17343@localhost>

Clemens Buchacher <drizzd@aon.at> wrote:

> > Other than "unexpected success", how is the DWIM behavior confusing,
> > given that it says exactly what it's doing when the DWIM behavior is
> > invoked?  I'm still not clear what the confusion you're referring to
> > is on this one.
> 
> I am telling git to checkout a branch. Instead it creates a branch.
> That is what is confusing to me. Until I found the commit that
> introduced it, I was sure it must be a bug.

I usually see the opposite kind of confusion on #git: someone cloned a
repository and wants to work on one of the branches. After all, we tell
everyone that clone copies all the history.

So they type "git checkout <that branch>"... and they get a weird
error (what's a pathspec, anyway?). OMGWTFBBQ! Not knowing what's going
on, they drop by in #git and hear they need to type something much less
straightforward than "git checkout <that branch>". They don't really
know why, so they probably assume it's because git is just so damn
complicated and overengineered.

I have yet to see any newish users complain about the new syntax, by the
way. You don't qualify, sorry. ;)