Re: [PATCH v15 0/2] checkout: --track=fetch

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

"Harald Nordgren via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com> writes:

> Extend checkout --track with a fetch mode to refresh start-point.
> Changes in v15:
>
>  * Reword commit message to lead with motivation.

I was reviewing the draft of the What's Cooking report and noticed  
that this topic is among a handful of stalled efforts going nowhere.

>      +    Forking from an existing remote branch without refreshing first often
>      +    has consequences: you start work that has already been done, or you
>      +    build on an old version of the code which causes big conflicts later
>      +    when you pull. The workaround is two commands ("git fetch <remote>
>      +    <branch> && git checkout -b <topic> <remote>/<branch>"), and when
>      +    the fetch is skipped the checkout silently starts from a stale tip.

Automatically updating the tip of the remote tracking branch also
has consequences.  It might be fine for the current branch, but it
would also make the other branches that forked from the same place
go "stale" and without the user realizing (e.g., "git diff @{u}"
while they are checked out would show what the user does not
expect).

As long as you keep calling this "workaround", I remain skeptical
that the merit of this proposal would outweigh its downside.  As
this topic is about to become more than a month old, let me mark
mark the topic to be discarded in my draft of the whats-cooking
report.