Clarify how "checkout -b/-B" and "git branch [-f]" are similar but
different in the documentation.
* jc/doc-checkout-b:
checkout: document -b/-B to highlight the differences from "git branch"
The existing text read as if "git checkout -b/-B name" were
equivalent to "git branch [-f] name", which clearly was not
what we wanted to say.
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
In the "DETACHED HEAD" section in the git-checkout doc, it suggests
using "git checkout -b <branch-name>" to create a new branch on the
detached head.
On the other hand, when you checkout a commit that is not at the tip of
any named branch (e.g., when you checkout a tag), git suggests using
"git switch -c <branch-name>".
Add "git switch -c" as another option and mitigate this inconsistency.
Signed-off-by: Yutaro Ohno <yutaro.ono.418@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add a CONFIGURATION section to the documentation of various built-ins,
for those cases where the relevant config/NAME.txt doesn't map only to
one git-NAME.txt. In particular:
* config/blame.txt: used by git-{blame,annotate}.txt. Since the
git-annotate(1) documentation refers to git-blame(1) don't add a
"CONFIGURATION" section to git-annotate(1), only to git-blame(1).
* config/checkout.txt: maps to both git-checkout.txt and
git-switch.txt (but nothing else).
* config/init.txt: should be included in git-init(1) and
git-clone(1).
* config/column.txt: We should ideally mention the relevant subset of
this in git-{branch,clean,status,tag}.txt, but let's punt on it for
now. We will when we eventually split these sort of files into
e.g. config/column.txt and
config/column/{branch,clean,status,tag}.txt, with the former
including the latter set.
Things that are being left out, and why:
* config/{remote,remotes,credential}.txt: Configuration that affects
how we talk to remote repositories is harder to untangle. We'll need
to include some of this in git-{fetch,remote,push,ls-remote}.txt
etc., but some of those only use a small subset of these
options. Let's leave this for now.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Reviewed-by: Matheus Tavares <matheus.bernardino@usp.br>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git branch -h" incorrectly said "--track[=direct|inherit]",
implying that "--trackinherit" is a valid option, which has been
corrected.
source: <3de40324bea6a1dd9bca2654721471e3809e87d8.1642538935.git.steadmon@google.com>
source: <c3c26192-aee9-185a-e559-b8735139e49c@web.de>
* js/branch-track-inherit:
branch,checkout: fix --track documentation
Document that the accepted variants of the --track option are --track,
--track=direct, and --track=inherit. The equal sign in the latter two
cannot be replaced with whitespace; in general optional arguments need
to be attached firmly to their option.
Put "direct" consistently before "inherit", if only for the reasons
that the former is the default, explained first in the documentation,
and comes before the latter alphabetically.
Mention both modes in the short help so that readers don't have to look
them up in the full documentation. They are literal strings and thus
untranslatable. PARSE_OPT_LITERAL_ARGHELP is inferred due to the pipe
and parenthesis characters, so we don't have to provide that flag
explicitly.
Mention that -t has the same effect as --track and --track=direct.
There is no way to specify inherit mode using the short option, because
short options generally don't accept optional arguments.
Signed-off-by: René Scharfe <l.s.r@web.de>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git -c branch.autosetupmerge=inherit branch new old" makes "new"
to have the same upstream as the "old" branch, instead of marking
"old" itself as its upstream.
* js/branch-track-inherit:
config: require lowercase for branch.*.autosetupmerge
branch: add flags and config to inherit tracking
branch: accept multiple upstream branches for tracking
It can be helpful when creating a new branch to use the existing
tracking configuration from the branch point. However, there is
currently not a method to automatically do so.
Teach git-{branch,checkout,switch} an "inherit" argument to the
"--track" option. When this is set, creating a new branch will cause the
tracking configuration to default to the configuration of the branch
point, if set.
For example, if branch "main" tracks "origin/main", and we run
`git checkout --track=inherit -b feature main`, then branch "feature"
will track "origin/main". Thus, `git status` will show us how far
ahead/behind we are from origin, and `git pull` will pull from origin.
This is particularly useful when creating branches across many
submodules, such as with `git submodule foreach ...` (or if running with
a patch such as [1], which we use at $job), as it avoids having to
manually set tracking info for each submodule.
Since we've added an argument to "--track", also add "--track=direct" as
another way to explicitly get the original "--track" behavior ("--track"
without an argument still works as well).
Finally, teach branch.autoSetupMerge a new "inherit" option. When this
is set, "--track=inherit" becomes the default behavior.
[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/git/20180927221603.148025-1-sbeller@google.com/
Signed-off-by: Josh Steadmon <steadmon@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"Zealous diff3" style of merge conflict presentation has been added.
* en/zdiff3:
update documentation for new zdiff3 conflictStyle
xdiff: implement a zealous diff3, or "zdiff3"
Doc update.
* ja/doc-cleanup:
init doc: --shared=0xxx does not give umask but perm bits
doc: git-init: clarify file modes in octal.
doc: git-http-push: describe the refs as pattern pairs
doc: uniformize <URL> placeholders' case
doc: use three dots for indicating repetition instead of star
doc: git-ls-files: express options as optional alternatives
doc: use only hyphens as word separators in placeholders
doc: express grammar placeholders between angle brackets
doc: split placeholders as individual tokens
doc: fix git credential synopsis
According to CodingGuidelines, multi-word placeholders should use
hyphens as word separators.
Signed-off-by: Jean-Noël Avila <jn.avila@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Reviewed-by: Eli Schwartz <eschwartz@archlinux.org>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Some commands have traditionally also removed untracked files (or
directories) that were in the way of a tracked file we needed. Document
these cases.
Signed-off-by: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git checkout" learned to use checkout.guess configuration variable
and enable/disable its "--[no-]guess" option accordingly.
* dl/checkout-guess:
checkout: learn to respect checkout.guess
Documentation/config/checkout: replace sq with backticks
"git checkout -p A...B [-- <path>]" did not work, even though the
same command without "-p" correctly used the merge-base between
commits A and B.
* dl/checkout-p-merge-base:
t2016: add a NEEDSWORK about the PERL prerequisite
add-patch: add NEEDSWORK about comparing commits
Doc: document "A...B" form for <tree-ish> in checkout and switch
builtin/checkout: fix `git checkout -p HEAD...` bug
The current behavior of git checkout/switch is that --guess is currently
enabled by default. However, some users may not wish for this to happen
automatically. Instead of forcing users to specify --no-guess manually
each time, teach these commands the checkout.guess configuration
variable that gives users the option to set a default behavior.
Teach the completion script to recognize the new config variable and
disable DWIM logic if it is set to false.
Signed-off-by: Denton Liu <liu.denton@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Using "A...B" has been supported for the <tree-ish> argument for a
while. However, its support has never been explicitly documented.
Explicitly document it so that users know that it is available.
Signed-off-by: Denton Liu <liu.denton@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
`git checkout` learned -d as short option for --detach in 163e3b2975
(switch: add short option for --detach, 2019-03-29) but the
documentation was never updated to reflect the change.
Signed-off-by: Eric Sunshine <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
The documentation refers to "initialized" or "populated" submodules,
to explain which submodules are affected by '--recurse-submodules', but
the real terminology here is 'active' submodules. Update the
documentation accordingly.
Some terminology:
- Active is defined in gitsubmodules(7), it only involves the
configuration variables 'submodule.active', 'submodule.<name>.active'
and 'submodule.<name>.url'. The function
submodule.c::is_submodule_active checks that a submodule is active.
- Populated means that the submodule's working tree is present (and the
gitfile correctly points to the submodule repository), i.e. either the
superproject was cloned with ` --recurse-submodules`, or the user ran
`git submodule update --init`, or `git submodule init [<path>]` and
`git submodule update [<path>]` separately which populated the
submodule working tree. This does not involve the 3 configuration
variables above.
- Initialized (at least in the context of the man pages involved in this
patch) means both "populated" and "active" as defined above, i.e. what
`git submodule update --init` does.
The --recurse-submodules option mostly affects active submodules. An
exception is `git fetch` where the option affects populated submodules.
As a consequence, in `git pull --recurse-submodules` the fetch affects
populated submodules, but the resulting working tree update only affects
active submodules.
In the documentation of `git-pull`, let's distinguish between the
fetching part which affects populated submodules, and the updating of
worktrees, which only affects active submodules.
Signed-off-by: Damien Robert <damien.olivier.robert+git@gmail.com>
Helped-by: Philippe Blain <levraiphilippeblain@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Also unify the formulation about --no-recurse-submodules for checkout
and switch, which we reuse for restore.
And correct the formulation about submodules' HEAD in read-tree, which
we reuse in reset.
Signed-off-by: Damien Robert <damien.olivier.robert+git@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Decisions taken for simplicity:
1) For now, `--pathspec-from-file` is declared incompatible with
`--patch`, even when <file> is not `stdin`. Such use case it not
really expected.
2) It is not allowed to pass pathspec in both args and file.
`you must specify path(s) to restore` block was moved down to be able to
test for `pathspec.nr` instead, because testing for `argc` is no longer
correct.
`git switch` does not support the new options because it doesn't expect
`<pathspec>` arguments.
Signed-off-by: Alexandr Miloslavskiy <alexandr.miloslavskiy@syntevo.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
`git add` shows an example of good writing, follow it.
Signed-off-by: Alexandr Miloslavskiy <alexandr.miloslavskiy@syntevo.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
It was added in [1]. I understand that the duplicate change was not
intentional and comes from an oversight.
Also, in explanation, there was only one section for two synopsis
entries.
Fix both problems by removing duplicate synopsis.
<paths> vs <pathspec> is resolved in next patch.
[1] Commit b59698ae ("checkout doc: clarify command line args for "checkout paths" mode" 2017-10-11)
Signed-off-by: Alexandr Miloslavskiy <alexandr.miloslavskiy@syntevo.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Two new commands "git switch" and "git restore" are introduced to
split "checking out a branch to work on advancing its history" and
"checking out paths out of the index and/or a tree-ish to work on
advancing the current history" out of the single "git checkout"
command.
* nd/switch-and-restore: (46 commits)
completion: disable dwim on "git switch -d"
switch: allow to switch in the middle of bisect
t2027: use test_must_be_empty
Declare both git-switch and git-restore experimental
help: move git-diff and git-reset to different groups
doc: promote "git restore"
user-manual.txt: prefer 'merge --abort' over 'reset --hard'
completion: support restore
t: add tests for restore
restore: support --patch
restore: replace --force with --ignore-unmerged
restore: default to --source=HEAD when only --staged is specified
restore: reject invalid combinations with --staged
restore: add --worktree and --staged
checkout: factor out worktree checkout code
restore: disable overlay mode by default
restore: make pathspec mandatory
restore: take tree-ish from --source option instead
checkout: split part of it to new command 'restore'
doc: promote "git switch"
...
"git branch new A...B" and "git checkout -b new A...B" have been
taught that in their contexts, the notation A...B means "the merge
base between these two commits", just like "git checkout A...B"
detaches HEAD at that commit.
* dl/branch-from-3dot-merge-base:
branch: make create_branch accept a merge base rev
t2018: cleanup in current test
When we ran something like
$ git checkout -b test master...
it would fail with the message
fatal: Not a valid object name: 'master...'.
This was caused by the call to `create_branch` where `start_name` is
expected to be a valid rev. However, git-checkout allows the branch to
be a valid _merge base_ rev (i.e. with a "...") so it was possible for
an invalid rev to be passed in.
Make `create_branch` accept a merge base rev so that this case does not
error out.
As a side-effect, teach git-branch how to handle merge base revs as
well.
Helped-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Denton Liu <liu.denton@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Previously the switching branch business of 'git checkout' becomes a
new command 'switch'. This adds the restore command for the checking
out paths path.
Similar to git-switch, a new man page is added to describe what the
command will become. The implementation will be updated shortly to
match the man page.
A couple main differences from 'git checkout <paths>':
- 'restore' by default will only update worktree. This matters more
when --source is specified ('checkout <tree> <paths>' updates both
worktree and index).
- 'restore --staged' can be used to restore the index. This command
overlaps with 'git reset <paths>'.
- both worktree and index could also be restored at the same time
(from a tree) when both --staged and --worktree are specified. This
overlaps with 'git checkout <tree> <paths>'
- default source for restoring worktree and index is the index and
HEAD respectively. A different (tree) source could be specified as
with --source (*).
- when both index and worktree are restored, --source must be
specified since the default source for these two individual targets
are different (**)
- --no-overlay is enabled by default, if an entry is missing in the
source, restoring means deleting the entry
(*) I originally went with --from instead of --source. I still think
--from is a better name. The short option -f however is already
taken by force. And I do think short option is good to have, e.g. to
write -s@ or -s@^ instead of --source=HEAD.
(**) If you sit down and think about it, moving worktree's source from
the index to HEAD makes sense, but nobody is really thinking it
through when they type the commands.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
This is already the default in git-checkout. The real change in here is
just minor cleanup. The main excuse is to explain why dwim is kept default.
Contrary to detach mode that is easy to get into and confusing to get
back out. Automatically creating a tracking branch often does not kick
in as often (you would need a branch of the same name on a remote). And
since the branch creation is reported clearly, the user should be able
to undo/delete it if it's unwanted.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git checkout" doing too many things is a source of confusion for many
users (and it even bites old timers sometimes). To remedy that, the
command will be split into two new ones: switch and restore. The good
old "git checkout" command is still here and will be until all (or most
of users) are sick of it.
See the new man page for the final design of switch. The actual
implementation though is still pretty much the same as "git checkout"
and not completely aligned with the man page. Following patches will
adjust their behavior to match the man page.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Add backticks where we have none, replace single quotes with backticks
and replace double-quotes. Drop double-quotes from nested constructions
such as `"@{-1}"`.
Helped-by: Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
I added this option in git-checkout and git-merge in c1d7036b6b
(checkout,merge: disallow overwriting ignored files with
--no-overwrite-ignore - 2011-11-27) but did not remember to update
documentation. This completes that commit.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
<branch> can be omitted in this syntax, and it's actually documented a
few paragraphs down:
You could omit <branch>, in which case the command degenerates to
"check out the current branch", which is a glorified no-op with
rather expensive side-effects to show only the tracking information,
if exists, for the current branch.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
It's easier to search for and also less cryptic.
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
If you have staged changes in path A and perform 'checkout
--merge' (which could result in conflicts in a totally unrelated path
B), changes in A will be gone. Which is unexpected. We are supposed
to keep all changes, or kick and scream otherwise.
This is the result of how --merge is implemented, from the very first
day in 1be0659efc (checkout: merge local modifications while switching
branches., 2006-01-12):
1. a merge is done, unmerged entries are collected
2. a hard switch to a new branch is done, then unmerged entries added
back
There is no trivial fix for this. Going with 3-way merge one file at a
time loses rename detection. Going with 3-way merge by trees requires
teaching the algorithm to pick up staged changes. And even if we detect
staged changes with --merge and abort for safety, an option to continue
--merge is very weird. Such an option would keep worktree changes, but
drop staged changes.
Because the problem has been with us since the introduction of --merge
and everybody has been pretty happy (except Phillip, who found this
problem), I'll just take a note here to acknowledge it and wait for
merge wizards to come in and work their magic. There may be a way
forward [1].
[1] CABPp-BFoL_U=bzON4SEMaQSKU2TKwnOgNqjt5MUaOejTKGUJxw@mail.gmail.com
Reported-by: Phillip Wood <phillip.wood@dunelm.org.uk>
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
"git checkout --no-overlay" can be used to trigger a new mode of
checking out paths out of the tree-ish, that allows paths that
match the pathspec that are in the current index and working tree
and are not in the tree-ish.
* tg/checkout-no-overlay:
revert "checkout: introduce checkout.overlayMode config"
checkout: introduce checkout.overlayMode config
checkout: introduce --{,no-}overlay option
checkout: factor out mark_cache_entry_for_checkout function
checkout: clarify comment
read-cache: add invalidate parameter to remove_marked_cache_entries
entry: support CE_WT_REMOVE flag in checkout_entry
entry: factor out unlink_entry function
move worktree tests to t24*
This mainly refers to enforcing indentation on additional lines of
items of lists.
Signed-off-by: Jean-Noël Avila <jn.avila@free.fr>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Currently 'git checkout' is defined as an overlay operation, which
means that if in 'git checkout <tree-ish> -- [<pathspec>]' we have an
entry in the index that matches <pathspec>, but that doesn't exist in
<tree-ish>, that entry will not be removed from the index or the
working tree.
Introduce a new --{,no-}overlay option, which allows using 'git
checkout' in non-overlay mode, thus removing files from the working
tree if they do not exist in <tree-ish> but match <pathspec>.
Note that 'git checkout -p <tree-ish> -- [<pathspec>]' already works
this way, so no changes are needed for the patch mode. We disallow
'git checkout --overlay -p' to avoid confusing users who would expect
to be able to force overlay mode in 'git checkout -p' this way.
Untracked files are not affected by this change, so 'git checkout
--no-overlay HEAD -- untracked' will not remove untracked from the
working tree. This is so e.g. 'git checkout --no-overlay HEAD -- dir/'
doesn't delete all untracked files in dir/, but rather just resets the
state of files that are known to git.
Suggested-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gummerer <t.gummerer@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
When checkout dwim is added in [1], it is restricted to only dwim when
certain conditions are met and fall back to default checkout behavior
otherwise. It turns out falling back could be confusing. One of the
conditions to turn
git checkout frotz
to
git checkout -b frotz origin/frotz
is that frotz must not exist as a file. But when the user comes to
expect "git checkout frotz" to create the branch "frotz" and there
happens to be a file named "frotz", git's silently reverting "frotz"
file content is not helping. This is reported in Git mailing list [2]
and even used as an example of "Git is bad" elsewhere [3].
We normally try to do the right thing, but when there are multiple
"right things" to do, it's best to leave it to the user to decide.
Check this case, ask the user to to disambiguate:
- "git checkout -- foo" will check out path "foo"
- "git checkout foo --" will dwim and create branch "foo" [4]
For users who do not want dwim, use --no-guess. It's useless in this
particular case because "git checkout --no-guess foo --" will just
fail. But it could be used by scripts.
[1] 70c9ac2f19 (DWIM "git checkout frotz" to "git checkout -b frotz
origin/frotz" - 2009-10-18)
[2] https://public-inbox.org/git/CACsJy8B2TVr1g+k+eSQ=pBEO3WN4_LtgLo9gpur8X7Z9GOFL_A@mail.gmail.com/
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18230655
[4] a047fafc78 (checkout: allow dwim for branch creation for "git
checkout $branch --" - 2013-10-18)
Signed-off-by: Nguyễn Thái Ngọc Duy <pclouds@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Followup to 5dd05ebf ("doc: fix merge-base ASCII art tab spacing", 2016-10-21)
Signed-off-by: Andreas Heiduk <asheiduk@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Introduce a checkout.defaultRemote setting which can be used to
designate a remote to prefer (via checkout.defaultRemote=origin) when
running e.g. "git checkout master" to mean origin/master, even though
there's other remotes that have the "master" branch.
I want this because it's very handy to use this workflow to checkout a
repository and create a topic branch, then get back to a "master" as
retrieved from upstream:
(
cd /tmp &&
rm -rf tbdiff &&
git clone git@github.com:trast/tbdiff.git &&
cd tbdiff &&
git branch -m topic &&
git checkout master
)
That will output:
Branch 'master' set up to track remote branch 'master' from 'origin'.
Switched to a new branch 'master'
But as soon as a new remote is added (e.g. just to inspect something
from someone else) the DWIMery goes away:
(
cd /tmp &&
rm -rf tbdiff &&
git clone git@github.com:trast/tbdiff.git &&
cd tbdiff &&
git branch -m topic &&
git remote add avar git@github.com:avar/tbdiff.git &&
git fetch avar &&
git checkout master
)
Will output (without the advice output added earlier in this series):
error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git.
The new checkout.defaultRemote config allows me to say that whenever
that ambiguity comes up I'd like to prefer "origin", and it'll still
work as though the only remote I had was "origin".
Also adjust the advice.checkoutAmbiguousRemoteBranchName message to
mention this new config setting to the user, the full output on my
git.git is now (the last paragraph is new):
$ ./git --exec-path=$PWD checkout master
error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git.
hint: 'master' matched more than one remote tracking branch.
hint: We found 26 remotes with a reference that matched. So we fell back
hint: on trying to resolve the argument as a path, but failed there too!
hint:
hint: If you meant to check out a remote tracking branch on, e.g. 'origin',
hint: you can do so by fully qualifying the name with the --track option:
hint:
hint: git checkout --track origin/<name>
hint:
hint: If you'd like to always have checkouts of an ambiguous <name> prefer
hint: one remote, e.g. the 'origin' remote, consider setting
hint: checkout.defaultRemote=origin in your config.
I considered splitting this into checkout.defaultRemote and
worktree.defaultRemote, but it's probably less confusing to break our
own rules that anything shared between config should live in core.*
than have two config settings, and I couldn't come up with a short
name under core.* that made sense (core.defaultRemoteForCheckout?).
See also 70c9ac2f19 ("DWIM "git checkout frotz" to "git checkout -b
frotz origin/frotz"", 2009-10-18) which introduced this DWIM feature
to begin with, and 4e85333197 ("worktree: make add <path> <branch>
dwim", 2017-11-26) which added it to git-worktree.
Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
@{-N} in "git checkout @{-N}" may refer to a detached HEAD state,
but the documentation was not clear about it, which has been fixed.
* ks/doc-checkout-previous:
Doc/checkout: checking out using @{-N} can lead to detached state
"git checkout --recursive" may overwrite and rewind the history of
the branch that happens to be checked out in submodule
repositories, which might not be desirable. Detach the HEAD but
still allow the recursive checkout to succeed in such a case.
* sb/submodule-recursive-checkout-detach-head:
Documentation/checkout: clarify submodule HEADs to be detached
recursive submodules: detach HEAD from new state
@{-N} is a syntax for the N-th last "checkout" and not the N-th
last "branch". Therefore, in some cases using `git checkout @{-$N}`
DOES lead to a "detached HEAD" state. This can also be ensured by
the commit message of 75d6e552a (Documentation: @{-N} can refer to
a commit, 2014-01-19) which clearly specifies how @{-N} can be used
to refer not only to a branch but also to a commit.
Correct the misleading sentence which states that @{-N} doesn't
detach HEAD.
Signed-off-by: Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
There are "git checkout [-p][<tree-ish>][--][<paths>...]" in the
SYNOPSIS section, and "git checkout [-p][<tree-ish>][--]<paths>..."
as the header for the section that explains the "check out paths
from index/tree-ish" mode. It is unclear if we require at least one
path, or it is entirely optional.
Actually, both are wrong. Without the "-p(atch)" option, you must
have <pathspec> (otherwise, with a commit that is a <tree-ish>, you
would be checking out that commit to build a new history on top of
it). With it, it is already clear that you are checking out paths,
it is optional. In other words, you cannot omit both.
The source of the confusion is that -p(atch) is described as if it
is just another "optional" part and its description is lumped
together with the non patch mode, even though the actual end user
experience is vastly different.
Let's split the entry into two, and describe the regular mode and
the patch mode separately. This allows us to make it clear that the
regular mode MUST be given at least one pathspec, that the patch
mode can be invoked with either '-p' or '--patch' but one of these
must be given, and that the pathspec is entirely optional in the
patch mode.
Also, revamp the explanation of "checkout paths" by removing
extraneous description at the beginning, that says "checking out
paths is not checking out a branch". Explaining what it is for and
when the user wants to use it upfront is the most direct way to help
the readers.
Noticed-by: Robert P J Day
Helped-by: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
