From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2012 18:31:20 GMT
Subject: Re: Bug: "git checkout -b" should be allowed in empty repo
Message-ID: <7vliof7r0n.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <4F2F9661.2020606@alum.mit.edu>

Michael Haggerty <mhagger@alum.mit.edu> writes:

>> So we are breaking the equivalence between these three only when HEAD
>> points at an unborn branch.
>
> You are thinking too much like a developer and not like a user.  For a user,
>
>     git checkout -b foo
>
> is a short-hand for
>
>     "create and check out a branch at my current state"
>
> and the interpretation of what that means when I am on an unborn branch
> seems unambiguous.

Ok, that is a very good explanation.

Care to come up with a patch to Documentation/git-checkout.txt?  The
description there strongly implies that <start point> is an existing
commit.  Not much is said about what the lack of <start point> mean when
it describes "checkout -b", and a standalone description of <start point>
says "The name of a comit at which to start... Defaults to HEAD".  These
need to be loosened and described in terms of the closer-to-the-user "at
my current state".