Re: [PATCH] cmd_reset: don't trash uncommitted changes unless told to

From: Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 25, 2008, 20:22 UTC
Message-ID: <32541b130806251322l478faa87gc9f2016254689022@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vlk0tz33n.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On 6/25/08, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> "Avery Pennarun" <apenwarr@gmail.com> writes:
>
>  > How about making "git checkout" default to HEAD if no revision is
>  > supplied?  There's precedent for this in, say, git-diff (and I think a
>  > few others).
>
> Won't fly.  'git checkout -- "$@"' is to revert to the last staged
>  version.

Ah, I didn't catch the difference between HEAD and index there.

>   * You say "git checkout -- file" when you want to "check out the file
>    from the index";

The real question here is the --. Is it strictly needed? It's optional in things like git-diff, which just do their best to guess what you mean if you don't use the --.

If reset and checkout made the -- optional, then you could do:

git reset filename # undo an accidental "add" git checkout filename # undo accidental modifications that haven't been added

...and save git reset --hard for people willing to take that risk. (The fact that git-gui includes git reset --hard as a really easy-to-click GUI command scared me the first time I saw it, too.)

I think simplifying the syntax might help to make the role of the index less mysterious in the whole "revert" operation. It's not obvious to me at all whether a revert-file ought to get the one from HEAD or the one from the index. But I can easily understand and explain checkout (copy index to working copy) and reset (undo an add).

Thanks,

Avery