Re: checkout and rm

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Jeff Jenkins <Jeff@ShopWiki.com> writes:

> With stash in 1.5.3 the only reason I
> can think of to allow working directory changes to propagate is gone

This reasoning is utterly wrong.

We often begin exploring a solution while on one branch (perhaps
'master'), starting with small changes in the work tree, and
then realize that it needs to be worked on in a separate branch:

	$ edit some work tree files
	$ git branch new-topic
        $ git checkout new-topic

Or maybe we would realize that the fix we started to work on
while on 'master' also applies to 'maint', and do the checkout
without creating a new branch:

	$ edit some work tree files
	$ git checkout maint

In either case, it is a _good_ thing that you can take your
local changes with you when you switch branches, without extra
stash/unstash sequence, and I do not think this is going to
change.

About the "lost remove", I think it is related to the fact that
we try to be usable in a sparsely checked out work tree, and
during a two-way merge (aka "switching branches") we consider a
missing file equivalent to an unmodified file and this might be
a bug in the logic to implement it there.  I haven't checked
this conjecture and won't have time now to do the digging myself
(you're welcome to do the digging yourself in the meantime).  It
may turn out to be a trivial change, but I dunno at this moment.