Re: master^ is not a local branch -- huh?!?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 29, 2010, 21:58 UTC
Message-ID: <7viqakh8ty.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <alpine.LFD.2.00.1001291641200.1681@xanadu.home>

Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> What purpose does this "feature" serve?  Making sure people remain 
> stupid and get even more confused when the special dwimery doesn't work 
> because they don't know the difference between a local branch and a 
> remote tracking branch?
>
> And now people will be left wondering why after a fetch they don't get 
> the latest stuff when they do "git checkout topic" again.  Is this any 
> better?

Sverre's explanation does not match reality.

We used to just say "topic is not a rev nor path" and failed when the user said "git checkout topic". And the magic kicks in when there is only one "remotes/*/topic".

Because this cannot be any request other than to check out a local branch "topic", and because there is no place more sensible than the "topic" taken from the "origin" (as that is the sole place that has "topic"), it dwims as a shorthand for "checkout -b topic origin/topic" and tells you that it did so.

So people _has_ to still know that local branches are the only thing they can check out (iow, "checkout topic" is not a request to check out a remote tracking branch).