Re: Re: [PATCH] Docs: git checkout --orphan: `root commit' and `branch head'

On Tue, Sep 27, 2011 at 10:31:17PM +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:

quoted

Not this person.

I like the idea but I'd rather see:

git commit --no-parent

"parent" at least appears in gitk and therefore newcomers will prob
have a better chance of understanding the intent w/out needing to
otherwise unnecessary terminology.
--

I think this feels and sounds sensible.  And better located within
the 'commit' command, rather than 'checkout --orphan' which was more
obscure (and difficult to find).

Keep in mind that making it part of commit is potentially much more
dangerous. With "checkout --orphan", you are making a _new_ branch that
has no parents. Committing on it will make a disconnected history, but
your original branch is still there.

With "git commit --no-parent", you are disconnecting history on the
_current_ branch. Which means you are throwing away the old history
completely. I.e., it is about as dangerous as "git branch -d", which we
usually protect with a "force" flag[1].

So at the very least, the documentation for the new option would need to
make the consequences very clear, and that one should run it on a newly
created branch if they don't want to throw away the old history.

-Peff

[1] Actually, it's similarly dangerous to "git reset", which doesn't
    have a force flag. But then, "git reset" is frequently brought up as
    the most dangerous and confusing command by new git users.