Re: [PATCH] branch -l: print useful info whilst rebasing a non-local branch

From: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Date: Mar 25, 2018, 04:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CAPig+cRe9AmFv=GCxPOo5vcLGFuT1qdM60M4KV5P6UN+Ai-QoQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180325041056.GA22321@sigill.intra.peff.net>

On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 12:10 AM, Jeff King <peff@peff.net> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Alternatively, we could at least detect the situation that confused you:
>
> diff --git a/builtin/branch.c b/builtin/branch.c
> @@ -676,6 +676,9 @@ int cmd_branch(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
> +       if (list && reflog)
> +               die(_("--reflog in list mode does not make sense"));
> +
>
> That doesn't help somebody mistakenly doing "git branch -l foo", but
> more likely they'd do "git branch -l jk/*" if they were trying to list
> branches (and then "branch" would barf with "that's not a valid branch
> name", though that may still leave them quite confused).

Assuming that existing clients of "-l" (if there are any) only invoke "git branch -l <name>" to create a new branch, then it would be possible to interpret "-l" as --list when <name> is an existing branch. That is, the "-l" in "git branch -l" and "git branch -l <existing-branch>..." is recognized as --list, and (for backward compatibility only) the "-l" in "git branch -l <new-branch>" is still recognized as --create-reflog.

This idea falls flat, however, if there are clients out there which actually depend upon "git branch -l <existing-branch>" failing.