Re: [BUG] git checkout <branch> allowed with uncommitted changes

On Fri, Oct 14, 2011 at 11:27:47AM +0200, Holger Hellmuth wrote:

On 14.10.2011 03:38, Jeff King wrote:

quoted

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 06:56:14PM +0000, arQon wrote:

quoted

I'll give a shot, though I don't know how good it'll be. Off the top of my
head, I don't see any good way to explain the inconsistency with LOCAL CHANGES
sometimes preventing switches and sometimes not, based on what is to the user
an arbitrary set of rules that has nothing to do with the *current state* of
the worktree, but rather the state of those files in prior commits.

The rules are fairly straightforward.

They are. But what arQon is getting at is that the normal
switchability depends on something that is often a game of chance:
Did I change a file that is different between the two branches? That
is only known by the user for branches not far removed.

Now the obvious answer is: It doesn't matter because git tells you.
At the right time to act upon it. But git says "M file" instead of
what 'git status' would say: "#  modified:   file". Is there a
reason for that? On one hand it should be familiar to svn users, on
the other hand it is an inconsistency. And personally I always hated
those cryptic status flags of svn

Another good point arQon made is that the case that you switched
with forgotten local changes is more common than the case that you
switched because you made changes in the wrong branch. If that were
the case the warning that you have local changes should be more
visible than that small "M file", at best something that looks
similar to 'git status' output.

Very good point. How about by default just running `git status` after a
successful checkout, and only printing the result if there are any
changes? That way:
1) If no changes are pending, nothing is displayed.
2) The user sees a *familiar* style output if anything changed.
3) If there's an alias for "status", it would be used.

Example:

$ mkdir /tmp/test
$ cd /tmp/test
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/test/.git/
$ echo foo > foo
$ echo bar > bar
$ git add foo bar
$ git commit -m "Initial commit"
[master (root-commit) 55246c6] Initial commit
 2 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 bar
 create mode 100644 foo
$ echo foobar > bar
$ git branch --track test
Branch test set up to track local branch master.
$ git checkout test
M   bar
Switched to branch 'test'

After `git checkout test`, we should instead see:
# On branch test
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#   modified:   bar
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

2c,
V

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