From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
To: Martin von Zweigbergk <martin.von.zweigbergk@gmail.com>
Cc: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [1.8.0] git checkout refs/heads/foo checks out branch foo
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 15:59:34 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20110207205934.GD13461@sigill.intra.peff.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.1.10.1102062234010.3788@debian>
On Mon, Feb 07, 2011 at 06:01:51AM -0500, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote:
> 'git checkout refs/heads/foo' (or 'git checkout heads/foo' for that
> matter) does not check out the branch, but instead detaches HEAD at
> foo. This is quite counter-intuitive (at least to me) and the same
> functionality can be achieved by using e.g. foo~0. Change the behavior
> so that the branch is actually checked out. This also applies to
> e.g. 'git rebase master refs/heads/topic', which currently rebases a
> detached HEAD. There are probably other examples as well that I'm not
> aware of.
I have seen that behavior claimed as intentional, but I agree it is
unintuitive. In most other places referring to a ref by a short name or
a fully qualified name is equivalent (except with respect to
disambiguating short names, of course).
> Existing scripts may depend on the current behavior. It seems unlikely
> that many users depend on it. Most likely, they use foo~0 or foo^0
> instead.
As cool and clever as the foo^0 behavior is once you understand it, I
think it is a horribly confusing thing for non-experts. As part of this
proposal, should we perhaps offer "git checkout --detach" as the
easy-on-the-eyes way of intentionally detaching?
-Peff
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2011-02-07 20:59 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 18+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2011-02-07 11:01 [1.8.0] git checkout refs/heads/foo checks out branch foo Martin von Zweigbergk
2011-02-07 20:53 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-07 20:59 ` Jeff King [this message]
2011-02-07 21:36 ` Sverre Rabbelier
2011-02-07 22:00 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-07 23:37 ` Junio C Hamano
2011-02-07 23:45 ` Jeff King
2011-02-08 0:01 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 0:28 ` Jeff King
2011-02-08 0:31 ` Martin von Zweigbergk
2011-02-08 0:52 ` [PATCH/WIP] checkout: introduce --detach synonym for "git checkout foo^{commit}" Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 0:55 ` Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 10:26 ` [PATCH v2 0/3] " Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 10:29 ` [PATCH 1/3] checkout: split off a function to peel away branchname arg Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 10:32 ` [PATCH 2/3] checkout: introduce --detach synonym for "git checkout foo^{commit}" Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-08 10:34 ` [PATCH 3/3] checkout: rearrange update_refs_for_switch for clarity Jonathan Nieder
2011-02-07 21:11 ` [1.8.0] git checkout refs/heads/foo checks out branch foo Heiko Voigt
2011-02-08 0:22 ` Martin von Zweigbergk
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