Re: Automagic `git checkout branchname` mysteriously fails

From: Martin Langhoff <martin.langhoff@gmail.com>
Date: Oct 14, 2016, 21:06 UTC
Message-ID: <CACPiFCJFXGmsJX97kQuA2h3trVX7L3SacwKrD4mpEU5SPxkLAA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20161014205842.GA6350@ikke.info>

On Fri, Oct 14, 2016 at 4:58 PM, Kevin Daudt <me@ikke.info> wrote:

> Correct, this only works when it's unambiguous what branch you actually
> mean.

That's not surprising, but there isn't a warning. IMHO, finding several branch matches is a strong indication that it'll be worth reporting to the user that the DWIM machinery got hits, but couldn't work it out.

I get that process is not geared towards making a friendly msg easy, but we could print to stderr something like:

 "branch" matches more than one candidate ref, cannot choose automatically.
 If you mean to check out a branch, try git branch command.
 If you mean to check out a file, use -- before the pathname to
 disambiguate.

and then continue with execution. With a bit of wordsmithing, the msg can be made to be helpful in the various failure modes.

cheers,

-- 
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