Re: [PATCH] checkout: do not switch branch during a rebase unless -f is given

From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Date: Sep 28, 2010, 05:33 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTinUudOXmhKW-+rkcpzb-VNnSBLZwGZcjrS6UdMu@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <1285649702-24773-1-git-send-email-pclouds@gmail.com>

(+cc: Frédéric, Dscho, Christian)

Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

> It does not make much sense to switch branch when you are in a middle
> of a rebase. Sometimes you might want to switch away for a moment then
> back with "git checkout - ". But I find myself so many times switching
> away then forget that I was rebasing something.
>
> Avoid doing that by default. Users can use -f if they really want to.

Nice! But I worry is that scripts that use "git checkout" porcelain during a rebase would be broken.

Even rebase --interactive uses checkout from time to time:

 - for preserving merges
 - to move to the correct branch in response to "git rebase -i
<upstream> <branch>"
 - to move to the target in "git rebase -i --onto <new base> <upstream>"

Unfortunately I do not have any good advice. Would it make sense to

 - first, change these call sites in git to use checkout -f
 - teach checkout to warn (without erroring out) to give people time
to change their scripts
 - warn loudly about the upcoming change in the release notes
 - later, change checkout to error out when -f is not supplied

or am I being too paranoid?

>  I know there are other commands like rebase ("git am" comes to mind)
>  but I don't use those. Feel free to put some more on top if somebody
>  finds it a good thing to do.

Another interesting one is "git bisect".