From: Daniel Barkalow Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:10:47 GMT Subject: Re: Difficulties in advertising a new branch to git newbies Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <87odognuhl.wl%cworth@cworth.org> On Tue, 30 Jan 2007, Carl Worth wrote: > Also, if I'm willing to assume (or insist) that users have git 1.5 or > newer, it'd be nice to be able to drop the "-b build" thing thanks to > the new detached HEAD support. But if I suggest doing just: > > git checkout origin/proposed-fix > > the user is presented with the following message which is much more > scary than useful in this situation: > > warning: you are not on ANY branch anymore. > If you meant to create a new branch from the commit, you need -b to > associate a new branch with the wanted checkout. Example: > git checkout -b origin/proposed-fix I think the warning should just be something where a user following your instructions will say, "ah, yes, that's actually what I want." Maybe: warning: you are now browsing the history without a local branch. You will not be able to commit changes unless you create a new local branch with "git checkout -b ". It's a bit silly for us to simply warn people that they're using this feature, rather than telling them what the potential downside is. Since it's marked as a warning, with no further information, the intuitive inference is that all sorts of bad things could happen (like, too many for us to list). At least we don't say "warning: your HEAD is now detatched" but still... -Daniel *This .sig left intentionally blank*