Re: Suggestion: better error message when an ambiguous checkout is executed

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

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Mahmoud Al-Qudsi <mqudsi@neosmart.net> writes:
>
>> The default git behavior when attempting to `git checkout xxx` for
>> some value of "xxx" that cannot be resolved to a single, unique
>> file/path/branch/tag/commit/etc is to display the following:
> ...
> So a possible implementation approach would be
>
>  - to let the current code do what it is doing
>
>  - except that you add new code immediately before the code that
>    issues 'xxx' did not match (i.e. the code already checked that
>    'xxx' taken as a pathspec does not match anything, and about to
>    give the error message but hasn't done so just yet).
>
>  - your new code 
>
>    . checks if 'xxx' could be an attempt to refer to a rev but
>      insufficiently spelled out (e.g. both origin[12]/xxx exists, or
>      for a bonus point, a similarly named origin/xxy exists and
>      could be a typo).
>
>    . if the above check found something, then you report it and
>      terminate without complaining "pathspec 'xxx' did not
>      match..."
>
>    . on the other hand, if the above check did not find anything,
>      then you let the current code issue the same error message as
>      before.

I was sweeping my mailbox to collect loose ends that haven't been
tied down, and noticed that this topic does not seem to have reached
a conclusion.  Do we want to reboot the effort?  Or should we just
throw it in the #leftoverbits bin for now?

Thanks.