Re: Git terminology: remote, add, track, stage, etc.

On 10/18/2010 11:57 PM, Jakub Narebski wrote:

I think that is a great idea. The thing that I found most confusing when learning git is that variations on a single command often have very different effects. My pet peeve is the over-versatile "git checkout":

git checkout BRANCH : Check out a branch. This is the functionality that I would expect from a "checkout" command.

git checkout -b NEWBRANCH OLDBRANCH : For me this was unintuitive,
because (IMO) the main effect of the command is to create a new branch.
 (I consider that more significant than the checkout because it has a
persistent effect on the repository.)  Therefore, I would expect this
functionality to be provided by "git branch" (something like "git branch
--checkout NEWBRANCH OLDBRANCH").

git checkout -b NEWBRANCH : This is even more unintuitive, because no content is being checked out at all. This should be written "git branch --checkout NEWBRANCH".

git checkout -- PATH : To me this is again a totally different operation. The other uses of "git checkout" are safe; they don't lose any information. But this usage discards the working copy changes irretrievably. Such a different operation deserves a different command with a "dangerous-sounding" name. I think this functionality should be made more easily accessible via "git reset", as has been suggested elsewhere on this thread. (Unfortunately "git revert" is already taken.)

git checkout BRANCH -- PATH : This is even more perverse. Usually "check out" makes the working copy more similar to a version in the repository. But this command makes it more different.

Michael