Re: [PATCH] Documentation/git-checkout: make doc. of checkout <tree-ish> clearer

From: Philip Oakley <philipoakley@iee.org>
Date: Apr 15, 2017, 23:28 UTC
Message-ID: <9535BE255A654CADB7B0AE7599A6FA96@PhilipOakley>
In-Reply-To: <1492287435.14812.2.camel@gmail.com>

From: "Christoph Michelbach" <michelbach94@gmail.com>

Show 22 quoted lines

> While technically in the documentation, the fact that changes
> introduced by a checkout <tree-ish> are staged automatically, was
> not obvious when reading its documentation. It is now specifically
> pointed out.
>
> Signed-off-by: Christoph Michelbach <michelbach94@gmail.com>
> ---
> Documentation/git-checkout.txt | 7 ++++---
> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt 
> b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> index 8e2c066..cfd7b18 100644
> --- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
> @@ -85,9 +85,10 @@ Omitting <branch> detaches HEAD at the tip of the 
> current branch.
> from the index file or from a named <tree-ish> (most often a
> commit). In this case, the `-b` and `--track` options are
> meaningless and giving either of them results in an error. The
> - <tree-ish> argument can be used to specify a specific tree-ish
> - (i.e. commit, tag or tree) to update the index for the given

Do these lines above actually need reflowing? Their content hasn't changed making it more difficult to spot the significant changes below here.

> - paths before updating the working tree.
> + <tree-ish> argument can be used to specify the tree-ish (i.e.
> + commit, tag, or tree) to update the index to for the given paths
> + before updating the working tree accordingly.

> +                               Note that this means
> + that the changes this command introduces are staged automatically.

Does this actually capture the intent of the user confusion it's meant to cover? I may have missed the original discussions.

For a clean commit checkout my mental model is not one of anything new being actively staged i.e. different from what was in the commit. I can see that if a particular tree is checkout then it's implicit staging could well be a surprise.

I am in favour of improving the documentation to avoid user surprise

Show 6 quoted lines

> +
> 'git checkout' with <paths> or `--patch` is used to restore modified or
> deleted paths to their original contents from the index or replace paths
> -- 
> 2.7.4
>

-- Philip