From: Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com>
Date: Mon, 03 Dec 2018 21:42:59 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH/RFC v2 0/7] Introduce new commands switch-branch and checkout-files
Message-ID: <CAGZ79kZk-im9=dgMJof2LGuR6hftMcnwx0=G-sjhkERWDqXEwA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8CkBV48Yd9FHfLVQSHJ630uw8icn128xjAPUOeWJVWfVA@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 7:33 AM Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 9:30 PM Stefan Beller <sbeller@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 12:09 PM Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Nov 28, 2018 at 9:01 PM Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > should we do
> > > > something about detached HEAD in this switch-branch command (or
> > > > whatever its name will be)?
> > > >
> > > > This is usually a confusing concept to new users
> > >
> > > And it just occurred to me that perhaps we should call this "unnamed
> > > branch" (at least at high UI level) instead of detached HEAD. It is
> > > technically not as accurate, but much better to understand.
> >
> > or 'direct' branch?
>
> makes me think, what is an indirect branch?

I drew the term from HEAD pointing to a branch pointing
to a commit, i.e. HEAD indirectly points to a commit, but
in 'direct' branch mode, HEAD contains the commit id.

So indirect branch would work for our current 'real' branches.

When asked out of context of this discussion, I might add
yet another layer of abstraction to make an 'indirect branch',
i.e. HEAD pointing to a symbolic ref that points at a branch
that points to a commit.

The term symref is what we currently use
(Just looked into gitglossary, where we distinguish
symbolic refs from pseudorefs) for hat I would have called
an indirect branch as well.

So maybe we need to measure the level of indirection
("How often do we need to dereference the ref/object to get
a commit oid?") to come to terms in how to describe
the use cases easily.

Here is a fun-one:
  git checkout <symbolic-ref>
  git checkout --detach

Currently the --detach option detaches HEAD from
branch pointing at the object id, i.e. it is the same as
  git checkout <oid>

whereas when we focus on the levels of indirection
it would also be reasonable to have
  git checkout <branch>
as a reasonable alternative, where <branch> is the
branch that is pointed at from the <symbolic ref>.