Re: [PATCH/RFC] builtin-checkout: suggest creating local branch when appropriate to do so

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Oct 13, 2009, 23:22 UTC
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.1.00.0910140117280.4985@pacific.mpi-cbg.de>
In-Reply-To: <20091013220640.GB12603@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Hi,

On Tue, 13 Oct 2009, Jeff King wrote:

Show 8 quoted lines

> On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 11:20:28PM +0200, Johannes Schindelin wrote:
> 
> > So in my opinion, we should DWIM "git checkout $X" to mean "git checkout 
> > -b $X refs/remotes/$REMOTE/$X" when there is no ref $X, refs/heads/$X and 
> > no other refs/remotes/$OTHER/$X.
> 
> The similar suggestion that is less magical is to say something like
> "there is no $X; maybe you meant $REMOTE/$X?".

At some point, trying to educate the user is not helpful but annoying. If Git already knows what I want, why does it not do it already? _That_ is the question I already hear in my ears.

> Is there a reason not to phase in the behavior, to make sure it is not 
> doing unexpected things?

Sure, I have nothing against that. But just insisting on the current behavior, or on some behavior that is not helpful at all, well, is not really clever.

Note that I am fully aware that my "git checkout -t origin/master" DWIMery backfired quite badly. So I am in the same boat.

Show 13 quoted lines

> In other words:
> 
>   1. In v1.6.6, find all error-correcting candidates and print them as
>      a suggestion (similar to what we do with "git foo").
> 
>   2. Then, if we all agree that it seems to be producing sane results,
>      the next step is to turn the unambiguous cases into a DWIM (and
>      leave the ambiguous ones with the "did you mean?" message).
> 
> Because right now I think there are a lot of hypothetical "maybe it
> would be less convenient or more confusing in this instance", but we
> don't have any data on how often those instances occur, or how actual
> users might react.

Oh, I do not want to spam the list with user experiences. But I do have not only a faint idea how users react. Thankyouverymuch.

> So doing step (1) would be a way of collecting some of that data (will 
> users say "stupid git, if you knew what I wanted, why didn't you just do 
> it?" or "stupid git, your suggestion is just confusing me!").

I disagree. It is not about collecting data. We will not get any feedback from the affected people. You know that, I know that.

The step (1) would help in the way that it is a smoother transition.

Ciao, Dscho