Re: [PATCH] git checkout -b: unparent the new branch with -o

[Erick Mattos <erick.mattos@gmail.com>]

Sorry for the e-mail sent wrong (GMANE/140995).  The message was
screwed by gmail by sending it in HTML which git list blocked.  I had
to forward another and mistakenly copied Junio's.

2010/2/24 Erick Mattos <erick.mattos@gmail.com>:
> Erick Mattos <erick.mattos@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> A good example to show the need of this option is a Debian folder of control
>> files.  Whenever a maintainer needs to debianize a source code to build
>> packages he needs to add a folder called Debian with a lot of files inside it.
>> Those files are connected to the source code of the program but they are not
>> really part of the program development.  On this situation using the new
>> option, that maintainer would do:
>>
>>       git checkout -ob debian
>>       git clean -df
>>       mkdir Debian
>>       add all control files
>>       ...hack it enough...
>>       git add Debian
>>       git commit
>
> I do not think that is a good example.
>
> If you have an extract of an upstream tarball, say frotz-1.42.tar.gz, and
> you are not porting anything older than that version, why not have two
> branches, frotz and master, and do things this way?
>
>  - frotz (or "vanilla" or "upstream") that keeps track of the "vendor
>  drop" without debian/ directory;
>
>  - master that forks from frotz and adds "debian/" and nothing else; and
>
>  - any other topic branches that either fork from frotz if you are fixing
>  upstream bug (or enhancing the vanilla version), or fork from master if
>  you are fixing or enhancing the debianization.
>
> When you receive frotz-1.43.tar.gz, you will advance 'frotz' branch with
> it, and probably fork maint-1.42 branch from master so that you can keep
> supporting older debianized frotz, while merging frotz into master so that
> you can prepare a debianized version of newer package.
>
> Your debianization will _never_ be totally independent of the vendor
> version, so there is no good reason to have it as a rootless branch.
>