Re: [PATCH] branch -l: print useful info whilst rebasing a non-local branch

From: Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 25, 2018, 06:54 UTC
Message-ID: <75722545-fe6e-322e-0485-70ec6b606cbf@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180325043337.GA32465@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Sunday 25 March 2018 10:03 AM, Jeff King wrote:

Show 5 quoted lines

> ...
> but I'd prefer to avoid those kinds of magic rules if we can. They're
> very hard to explain to the user, and can be quite baffling when they go
> wrong.
>

I fell the same too.

Show 17 quoted lines

> IMHO we should do one of:
> 
>   1. Nothing. ;)
> 
>   2. Complain about "-l" in list mode to help educate users about the
>      current craziness.
> 
>   3. Drop "-l" (probably with a deprecation period); it seems unlikely
>      to me that anybody uses it for branch creation, and this would at
>      least reduce the confusion (then it would just be "so why don't we
>      have -l" instead of "why is -l not what I expect").
> 
>   4. Repurpose "-l" as a shortcut for --list (also after a deprecation
>      period). This is slightly more dangerous in that it may confuse
>      people using multiple versions of Git that cross the deprecation
>      line. But that's kind of what the deprecation period is for...
>

I think we should do 2 as a short term fix for sure. For the long term, I would prefer 4 as I think most users would expect "-l" to be a shortcut for "--list" particularly given the current situation that "git branch -l" lists all the branch names.

That said, I would not mind considering 3 if 4 has more bad consequences than the good it does (but I heavily doubt it ;-) ).

I don't consider 1 to be an option ;-)

-- 
Kaartic