Re: Suggestion: make git checkout safer

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Jun 3, 2015, 09:06 UTC
Message-ID: <20150603090654.GD32000@peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <loom.20150603T104534-909@post.gmane.org>

On Wed, Jun 03, 2015 at 08:50:44AM +0000, Ed Avis wrote:

Show 23 quoted lines

> Currently a plain 'git checkout .' will revert any local changes, e.g.
> 
>     % mkdir test
>     % cd test
>     % git init
>     Initialized empty Git repository in /home/eda/test/.git/
>     % echo hello >foo
>     % git add foo
>     % git commit -m.
>     [master (root-commit) 34f6694] .
>      1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
>      create mode 100644 foo
>     % echo goodbye >foo
>     % git checkout .
>     % cat foo
>     hello
> 
> I suggest this is dangerous and by default 'git checkout' should only alter
> files which do not have local changes (as would be reported by 'git diff').
> Only if --force is given should working tree differences be thrown away.
> 
>     % git --version
>     git version 2.4.0

That's what "git checkout <path>" is designed for. I'm not clear on what you expect "git checkout ." to do in this example, if not overwrite "foo". Can you elaborate?

-Peff