Re: [PATCH] git-checkout: disable guides how to switch branches with ui.guide

[Carl Worth <cworth@cworth.org>]

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On Thu, 01 Feb 2007 13:06:34 -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> The error message you quoted is given when your head is detached
> and you tried the regular "checkout an existing branch" -- which
> will lose where your detached HEAD currently is.

I think the problem with this is that git tells the user so little
information, ("may lose your changes"). What changes? Is that dirty
state?  Some commits? Hmm... have I committed anything? Why can't git
be sure about what this operation is going to do?

I think a really useful message would be something like:

	You are not on any branch so switching to branch 'foo'
	will cause the following commits to be lost:

		ba531642 A commit headline here...
		b1189118 Another commit headline here...

	Refusing to checkout 'foo'.

Didn't a bunch of work get committed to make the reachability analysis
feasible to generate a message like this?

If there are no commits that would become dangling, then the checkout
should just proceed. As for the concern about losing a pointer to some
"valuable" state that will still technically be reachable, but might
be hard to get back, why not just print a message along the lines of:

	Leaving commit 7b1509f4 to checkout 'foo'.

(or just depend on the HEAD reflog).

-Carl

PS. If nothing else gets changed in the current message, please
reconsider the current wording of:

	Leaving your HEAD detached; not switching to branch 'foo'.

Think: Wow, I had heard that git might help me shoot myself in the
foot, but I never though I might behead myself with it.

It would probably work to just reword that as:

	Not switching to branch 'foo'.

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