Re: [RFC] git checkout $tree -- $path always rewrites files

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Sat, Nov 08, 2014 at 08:19:21AM -0800, Martin von Zweigbergk wrote:

> > What should:
> >
> >   git checkout HEAD -- some-new-path
> >
> > do in that case? With the current code, it actually barfs, complaining
> > that nothing matched some-new-path (because it is not part of HEAD, and
> > therefore we don't consider it at all), and aborts the whole operation.
> > I think we would want to delete some-new-path in that case, too.
> 
> I don't think we'd want it to be deleted. I would view 'git reset
> --hard' as the role model here, and that command (without paths) would
> not remove the file. And applying it to a path should not change the
> behavior, just restrict it to the paths, right?

Are you sure about "git reset" here? If I do:

  git init
  echo content >file && git add file && git commit -m base
  echo modified >file
  echo new >some-new-path
  git add file some-new-path
  git reset --hard

then we delete some-new-path (it is not untracked, because the index
knows about it). That makes sense to me. I.e., we treat it with the same
"preciousness" whether it is named explicitly or not.

-Peff