Re: [PATCH 1/5] t1508 (at-combinations): more tests; document failures

From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: May 2, 2013, 09:07 UTC
Message-ID: <CALkWK0=B_Ym_ei181eV-WeqJZJyHPv-AmLzYwajm13wftJkB6g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s31jyuGGG1Wn9D=D9udkJJdXQfwVAnHuOg02FWinpmn7Q@mail.gmail.com>

Felipe Contreras wrote:

> [...]

Yes, I'm working on a re-roll.

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> Moreover, the symbolic-ref 'HEAD' is quite special, it's mentioned
> everywhere in the documentation, and the code has special cases for
> it. It's not reasonable to expect all relevant places to be updated
> for this functionality, and certainly 'Documentation/revisions.txt' is
> not the only one.

I'm not denying that HEAD is special. I'm just improving the general support for symbolic-refs, so that the difference between HEAD and any other symbolic-ref is smaller.

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> For example, in Ramkumar's approach:
>
>  % git branch -u master @
>
> Would replace '@' with HEAD, however:
>
>  % git branch --edit-description @
>
> Would not.

git branch -u master <any symbolic ref> will work just fine. It has nothing to do with my series.

Does git branch --edit-description HEAD work? Then why do you expect git branch --edit-description <any other symbolic ref> to work? git branch --edit-description operates on non-symbolic refs.

Let me make this clear: @ is just another symbolic-ref that always points to the same thing as HEAD. Nothing less, nothing more.

> In my opinion, if 'git branch X @{-1}' doesn't work, neither should
> 'git branch X @', and that's what my approach does.

Why shouldn't (doesn't) git branch X @{-1} work? git branch X <any expression with or without a symbolic ref> works fine, and it has nothing to do with my series.