From: Angelo Borsotti <angelo.borsotti@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2012 13:42:11 GMT
Subject: checkout extra files
Message-ID: <CAB9Jk9BvQmFfTq3a+e-7t-66s06jLK4fWuZB+MJHrAtbznBvHw@mail.gmail.com>

Hello,

the man page of git checkout states:

git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...

It updates the named paths in the working tree from the index file or
from a named <tree-ish> ...

This means that for each file denoted by pathspec, git tries to
restore it from the tree-ish.
However, it seems that git does more than this: it restores also files
that are not denoted
by pathspec.
This sequence of commands shows it:

$ mkdir gittest
$ cd gittest
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in d:/gittest/.git/
$ touch f1
$ git add f1
$ git commit commit -m "first commit"
[master (root-commit) 94d882a] first commit
 0 files changed
 create mode 100644 f1
$ rm f1
$ git checkout 94d8 -- *
$ ls
f1

Note that the work directory is empty when the checkout is done, and
that the checkout restores f1
in it, a file that is not denoted by the * pathspec.
I guess that this is the intended behaviour, and that the man page
should be updated to tell exactly
what files git restores.

-Angelo Borsotti