Re: [PATCH] checkout: disambiguate dwim tracking branches and local files

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Nov 12, 2018, 19:44 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqq36s613p8.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <CACsJy8DZy2hozNypxizF=LmJn8gw9z5HGhV0paiMuM9+gxYVvg@mail.gmail.com>

Duy Nguyen <pclouds@gmail.com> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Is it that different between an exact path name and a pathspec?
> Suppose it is a pathspec (with wildcards) that matches some paths, and
> we happen to have the remote branch origin/<that-pathspec>, then it is
> still ambiguous whether we should go create branch
> "<that-pathspec>" or go check out the paths matched by the pathspec.

: A huge difference between these two

	$ echo Hello >'n??t' && git add 'n??t'
	$ git branch 'n??t'

is that the former is taken and the latter is rejected, even though neither of them is particularly a sane or a likely thing.

Isn't that a good enough reason why

	$ git checkout 'n??t'

cannot mean checking 'n??t' branch out, be it either an existing local one or auto-vivified one out of a remote-tracking branch?

> I think you see 'n??t' as a pathspec, but I'm thinking about a user
> who sees 'n??t' as a branch name, not pathspec and he would have a
> different expectation.

See above for the reason why I think there is no room for different expectations to come in the picture in this case.