Re: BUG or FEATURE? Use of '/' in branch names

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: May 2, 2014, 22:16 UTC
Message-ID: <20140502221617.GO9218@google.com>
In-Reply-To: <AAC0CF0A2CCEC34CBE983015FD81C4F7392A504B61@AICEXMBXCL02.LGE.NET>

Hi Keith,

Keith Derrick wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>     $ git checkout -b hotfix
>     Switched to a new branch 'hotfix'
>     $ git checkout -b hotfix/b2
>     error: unable to resolve reference refs/heads/hotfix/b2: Not a directory
>     fatal: Failed to lock ref for update: Not a directory
>     $

That's an ugly message.  I think we can do better. (hint hint)

Longer term, I think people would like to make it possible for a 'hotfix' and 'hotfix/b2' branch to coexist, but that will take some work, and until then, git tries to be careful about enforcing the constraint that they cannot coexist.

Fixing it would be complicated by the need to avoid breaking people with older versions of git when they fetch from you (what happens to the origin/hotfix and origin/hotfix/b2 remote-tracking refs on the client side?).

Thanks and hope that helps, Jonathan