Re: git-checkout silently throws away the dirty status of index without a warning?

Tzu-Jung Lee <roylee17@gmail.com> writes:

Yes, I think you are talking about the case where "the current index does not match the current HEAD, but it does match the tree we are switching to" case. In that case we take the contents of switched-to branch.

It is the last case in the table in this old design document:

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/4641

bug ignore the terminology (stage#). Read only the body of the table, with the understanding that the three entries in each row talk about the state for the same path in the index entry, the tree entry in the current HEAD, and the tree entry in the switched-to branch. Also the table does not talk about the checking performed on the working tree file, but assume that we do not overwrite it when the resulting entry in the index does not match what you have there.

The reason we allow branch switching in this case, instead of failing, is so that you can be in a state where you applied the same change (relative to the current branch to the branch you are switching to) lying around already in your workspace and safely switch to the new branch without losing any work (after all, the content matches).

By the way, the first six lines of your original message that describes "saving and applying" is not correct.