Re: git-checkout-index, flag ordering and --prefix kludgy handling

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>]

On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
> The patch looks good.  Thanks.

Btw, I'd really like a "git checkout" that can do the per-file thing, 
instead of always using the equivalent of git-checkout-index with "-a".

It's actually one of the few places where I still use the raw git 
commands, doing things like

	git-checkout-index -u -f filename

and I suspect that a lot of people would prefer that

	git checkout filename

would just do that. Instead, we error out ("no such branch"). Which 
isn't even what I want, and almost certainly not what most CVS users want 
(they're used to checking out individual files).

Of course, in the generic case, that would require git-read-tree to take a 
list of filenames (which would act as a "mask" for any activity against 
the old index if one was loaded), but that's a pretty big thing. Even if 
it's admittedly also potentially very useful too..

But even just a total special case (giving a filename would force the 
checkout, no read-tree, no nothing, just force the old index contents) 
might be acceptable and would only require some script hackery.

		Linus