Re: [PATCH] checkout --track: make up a sensible branch name if '-b' was omitted

From: Pieter de Bie <pieter@frim.nl>
Date: Aug 9, 2008, 21:44 UTC
Message-ID: <A6E466C6-C3B5-40EB-940C-516CF4D02ADF@frim.nl>
In-Reply-To: <7vsktd51wg.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Aug 9, 2008, at 11:11 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

>>> (1) You may not necessarily are used to --track, but may still  
>>> want this
>>>    done.  It might not be a bad idea to associate this "local  
>>> dwimming"
>>>    to creation of a new branch.  In other words, all of these:
>>>
>>>    $ git checkout -b origin/next
>>
>> This cannot be dwimmed, as it literally means "start a new branch  
>> called
>> 'origin/next' from HEAD".
>
> Right.  Forget this part.

This is too bad. I often see people make mistakes like

	git checkout -b origin/master
or
	git checkout -b origin/master origin/master

which should be

	git checkout -b origin/master master

I think both forms should at least be an error if the remote branch "origin/master" already exists, as then suddenly they aren't reachable anymore by using "origin/master".

Changing the behaviour to mean "git checkout -b origin/master master" will change the meaning, but who uses -b with an existing remote branch anyway? I think the current behaviour leads to more confusion in every case and should at least error out ("Error: creating a local repository with the same name as the remote is not allowed") or do what it's meant to do, which is create a local repository with the trailing part.

Just my .02,

- Pieter