Re: Adding new/create & del/delete aliases into git

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 16, 2021, 23:43 UTC
Message-ID: <211217.86ee6c9kqv.gmgdl@evledraar.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CALtRjJ3bu1ub=407kt-aemfV6BU8CfPZJxLRG5WgTZBYWbaXCQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Dec 16 2021, Jasdeep Khalsa wrote:

Show 11 quoted lines

> Hi there Git Community!
>
> I've been using the following aliases for a long time:
>
> del or delete = branch -D
> new or create = checkout -b
>
> And I feel these are good candidates as an addition into the core git
> API as they provide an easy way for new starters to understand the
> creating and deleting of branches - which is arguably one of the most
> common git operations.

As a general advice if we're providing any sort of sugar / default flags either as a guide or as aliases for newcomers it's probably good to not do so with --force, i.e. your -D will shred data users might still want, better to make it a -d. You can always add -D when needed.

Show 16 quoted lines

> In comparison, passing in flags for this purpose for new starters to
> git, is both hard to remember and not easy or obvious to understand
> what is going on.
>
> From my understanding, these flags were also meant as a shortcut to do
> a git branch && git checkout in one operation - effectively being
> alias flags anyway.
>
> So I wanted to reach out to find out what appetite there may be out
> there to add/change these to be simpler for new starters to git :)
>
> Thanks for considering my proposal and happy to discuss any thoughts!
>
> Jasdeep
>
> https://github.com/jasdeepkhalsa

There was a more extensive proposal discussed on-list recently here: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20210702100506.1422429-6-felipe.contreras@gmail.com/

I think if you're interested reading that & using some of the things that came up there as a jumping-off point would be a good place to start.