Re: [BUG] git checkout <branch> allowed with uncommitted changes

[Victor Engmark <victor.engmark@terreactive.ch>]

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 11:27:47AM +0200, Holger Hellmuth wrote:
> On 14.10.2011 03:38, Jeff King wrote:
> >On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 06:56:14PM +0000, arQon wrote:
> >
> >>I'll give a shot, though I don't know how good it'll be. Off the top of my
> >>head, I don't see any good way to explain the inconsistency with LOCAL CHANGES
> >>sometimes preventing switches and sometimes not, based on what is to the user
> >>an arbitrary set of rules that has nothing to do with the *current state* of
> >>the worktree, but rather the state of those files in prior commits.
> >
> >The rules are fairly straightforward.
> 
> They are. But what arQon is getting at is that the normal
> switchability depends on something that is often a game of chance:
> Did I change a file that is different between the two branches? That
> is only known by the user for branches not far removed.
> 
> Now the obvious answer is: It doesn't matter because git tells you.
> At the right time to act upon it. But git says "M file" instead of
> what 'git status' would say: "#  modified:   file". Is there a
> reason for that? On one hand it should be familiar to svn users, on
> the other hand it is an inconsistency. And personally I always hated
> those cryptic status flags of svn
> 
> Another good point arQon made is that the case that you switched
> with forgotten local changes is more common than the case that you
> switched because you made changes in the wrong branch. If that were
> the case the warning that you have local changes should be more
> visible than that small "M file", at best something that looks
> similar to 'git status' output.

Very good point. How about by default just running `git status` after a
successful checkout, and only printing the result if there are any
changes? That way:
1) If no changes are pending, nothing is displayed.
2) The user sees a *familiar* style output if anything changed.
3) If there's an alias for "status", it would be used.

Example:

$ mkdir /tmp/test
$ cd /tmp/test
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test/.git/
$ echo foo > foo
$ echo bar > bar
$ git add foo bar
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 55246c6] Initial commit
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 bar
 create mode 100644 foo
$ echo foobar > bar
$ git branch --track test
Branch test set up to track local branch master.
$ git checkout test
M   bar
Switched to branch 'test'

After `git checkout test`, we should instead see:
# On branch test
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   bar
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

2c,
V

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