From: Angelo Borsotti <angelo.borsotti@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2012 19:29:46 GMT
Subject: Re: checkout extra files
Message-ID: <CAB9Jk9DVcG14mS3HaGE4JEY0AwExvjqrnQqzTEZxHLjEQ6UObg@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7v4nndd98g.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

Hi,

figuring out what the behavior is by guessing how a command is implemented and
what are its interactions with the shell is a bit hard for the user:
s/he should instead
get it from the documentation.
I tried to figure it out from the examples I have done, and as you
see, I did not get it
quite right.

The issue here is that the paths must denote filenames that are
present in the index
or tree-ish, so, wildcards are misleading since they would instead be
interpreted
with respect to the working directory.
A possible way to make this clear is to warn the user to quote paths
that contain
wildcards. Something like, e.g.:

  "Note that <paths> that contain wildcards must be quoted in order to
denote files that
   belong to the index or <tree-ish>. Otherwise, they are interpreted
by the shell with
   respect to the current directory, with a result that may depend on
the shell."

-Angelo