Re: [PATCH 0/5] bisect: Add support for a --no-checkout option.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 1, 2011, 23:33 UTC
Message-ID: <7vaabshfmb.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CAH3Anrqp3BVMpTz7DhYBL=9nt1F30_20t=FmcmdZHqMHLEqXqA@mail.gmail.com>

Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com> writes:

Show 11 quoted lines

> On Tue, Aug 2, 2011 at 3:33 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Jon Seymour <jon.seymour@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> It might become more important if someone ever writes a tool that does
>>> a bisection on the user's behalf. In this case, aborting the tool
>>> might leave the HEAD in, what appears to the user, a confused state.
> ...
> In this hypothetical additional series, are you happy for
> --no-checkout to become a synonym for --update-ref=HEAD in the manner
> of v8? From a technical perspective, it doesn't seem necessary to
> duplicate the state variables and parameters.

Well, from a technical perspective, which ref is to be updated is an option that is valid _only_ under no-checkout mode, and no-checkout mode could be using HEAD, so I think you would need two variables. One for "what mode are we running", and the other that is only valid under "we are in no-checkout mode" that says "we update BISECT_HEAD".

If no-checkout mode _never_ updates HEAD, because the normal mode _always_ updates HEAD, you could reduce them into a single variable (i.e. if we are updating HEAD then we are in normal mode, otherwise we are in no-checkout mode). I actually have a mild suspicion that the no-checkout mode may turn out to be too confusing for people if it by default updates HEAD, and we may want to have it update something that is not HEAD by default (or forbid --update-ref from specifying HEAD), so if that turns out to be the approach we are going to proceed, we _might_ end up needing only one variable, but I do not think we know it just yet. At least I don't.