Re: [RFC/PATCH] git checkout $tree path

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 6:26 AM, Jeff King [off-list ref] wrote:

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 03:46:31PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

An alternative semantics could be to first remove paths that match the
given pathspec from the index, then update the index with paths taken from
the named tree, and update the working tree. "git checkout master dir"
would then mean "replace anything currently in dir with whatever is in dir
in master". It is more dangerous, and it can easily emulated by doing:

being what the user expects. As in, "master deleted this file; shouldn't
checkout pull the deletion to my new branch when I ask it to?".

But we can't distinguish those two cases without actually having a merge
base. And this isn't a merge; it's not about picking changes from
master, it's about saying "make dir look like it does in master". So
in that sense, the most straightforward thing is your second
alternative: afterwards, we should have only the files in "dir" that
master has.

I think I'd expect the first behavior with:

$ git checkout master -- dir/*

And the second with:

$ git checkout master -- dir

$0.02.

j.