Re: branch --set-upstream considered harmful

From: Jay Soffian <jaysoffian@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 7, 2010, 07:37 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTim6JrB1JmwQYThSiVqubhb7Uy6HrZcQXbHNZEsl@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <201006070837.16713.trast@student.ethz.ch>

On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 2:37 AM, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> Jay Soffian wrote:
>>
>> Git is inconsistent.
> [...]
>> $ git branch --set-upstream=origin/master
>> $ git branch --set-upstream origin/master
>
> Doesn't this just make it *more* confusing?
>
> Either we document this, and the user will be left wondering why we
> have two almost identical (and by the conventions of many other
> programs, including git-send-email, *equivalent*) syntaxes doing,
> well, something not quite entirely unlike the same.
>
> Or we don't, and the user will eventually typo it and wonder WTF he
> just did wrong.

Please take a step back and see my original message. The thing that motivated this is that the existing invocation is, I claim, bass-ackwards. I was merely looking for a backwards compatible solution that doesn't introduce yet another argument. But, maybe set-upstream hasn't been around so long that breaking it (i.e., making it an option that requires an argument) wouldn't be a bad idea.

Enough talk, I'll send up a patch when I get some more time.

j.