Re: [PATCH] Disallow creating ambiguous branch names by default

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 19, 2011, 20:49 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1uwh2kks.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAOTq_ptU2QmPMMZYQLd2MFQ_=_RnADdBnoN5+v4rXh_nmpOcjw@mail.gmail.com>

Conrad Irwin <conrad.irwin@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> In the process of changing things around to do this, I noticed that
>
> git checkout -M <foo> <current-branch>
>
> surprisingly works,...

What is "-M" supposed to do???

If you meant "-B", that should work. When I want to rewrite a topic in a non-trivial way, I would often do:

	$ git checkout HEAD^^^
        work to redo what the few commits at the tip should have done,
        creating commits.
        $ git diff @{-1} HEAD
        $ git checkout -B @{-1}

which often happens to be simpler and more flexible than the canned rewriting options "rebase -i" can offer me.

> ... in that you will get a:
>
> $ git rev-parse HEAD@{1}
> warning: Log .git/logs/HEAD has gap after Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:00:09 -0700

If that is the case, then the codepath to update the reflog is broken. That is not a reason to forbid -B, though.

But because I do not know what you meant by "checkout -M", ...