Re: git checkout -t -B

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 27, 2012, 17:03 UTC
Message-ID: <7vk3wks1w4.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8A=GooUesw0hJ7AiDO7M3v1Ybbox8+rwWJfn6urJQUUFw@mail.gmail.com>

Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 24 quoted lines

> On Mon, Aug 27, 2012 at 1:38 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
>> 乙酸鋰 <ch3cooli@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> git checkout -t -B origin/abcde
>>> works
>>>
>>> but
>>> git checkout -B -t origin/abcde
>>> does not.
>>>
>>> Could you document the order of parameters or fix the behaviour?
>>
>> It is crystal clear that -b/-B/--orphan must be followed by the name
>> of the branch you are creating from the SYNOPSIS section of the
>> documentation.
>
> Yet it's not very clear from the error message:
>
>     fatal: git checkout: updating paths is incompatible with switching branches.
>     Did you intend to checkout 'origin/abcde' which can not be
> resolved as commit?
>
> I wonder if we should reject -t as a value of -[Bb] by adding new
> parseopt flag to reject values starting with '-'.

You should be able to cope with other invalid branch names in the same codepath, but your approach would not help at all if the user said "git checkout -B q..f origin/abcde". Futzing with parseopt is not a reasonable answer to this one.

Ideally you would want

	fatal: "-t" is not an acceptable name for a branch

in this case; if it is cumbersome to arrange, at the very least,

	updating paths is incompatible with checking out the branch "-t".

would be clearer.