Re: [PATCH/RFC] builtin-checkout: suggest creating local branch when appropriate to do so

[Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr>]

Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Jeff King wrote:
>
>> Some devil's advocate questions:
>> 
>>   1. How do we find "origin/next" given "next"? What are the exact
>>      lookup rules? Do they cover every case? Do they avoid surprising
>>      the user?
>
> I am sure your strategy would be the same as mine: enumerate all remote 
> branches, strip the remote nickname, and compare.  If there are 
> ambiguities, tell the user and stop.
>
>>   2. What do we do if our lookup is ambiguous (e.g., "origin/next" and
>>      "foobar/next" both exist)?
>
> See above.

One problem with this approach is that if users get used to the
behavior, the command will have great probability to end up in a
user's script, then the script will "work" as long as there is no
ambiguity, and cease to work afterwards. And for the user of the
script, this will sound like "WTF, it was working yesterday and it's
broken now".

So, the good thing with being strict, even if giving advice in case of
failure, is that it teaches the user the reliable way to do.

All that said, I'm not sure how serious this is, but we're in a
"devil's advocate" session, so I'm still allowed to speak ;-).


The other fear I have is to create confusion. Today, it's quite clear
that "next" is not the same as "origin/next". With some DWIMery on top
of this, a naive user may think they are more or less the same, and
then not understand what "git fetch" does and why it's not the same as
"git pull".

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/