Re: 'git branch' when origin branch with same name exists

On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 8:21 PM, Ryan Lortie [off-list ref] wrote:

hi,

After helping someone on IRC who got themselves into a bit of a problem, I
have a feature request for git.

In this case, the user wanted to checkout a branch of a module.  They did:

 git clone git://git.gnome.org/gtk+
 cd gtk+
 git branch gtk-3-4

Obviously this is a user error, but it's a pretty innocent one, and puts the
user in a bad state.  When they figure they should have typed "git checkout
gtk-3-4" it is already too late -- they will be taken onto their
locally-created copy of the master branch.

So feature request: 'git branch' should not allow creating a local branch
that has the same name as a branch that already exists on 'origin' (or any
remote?) without some sort of --force flag.  It could instead helpfully say:

 """

   The branch you are trying to create already exists on the origin.
   Are you sure you don't want to checkout this branch using
   'git checkout gtk-3-4'

 """

or something like that.

Thoughts?

Dont know much about this but to me it looks like a good feature.

-- 
Jaseem Abid
http://jaseemabid.github.com