Re: [PATCH 1/2] Documentation/git-checkout.txt: clarify usage

On 18 December 2012 08:59, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Andrew Ardill [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Even if the primary purpose of "git checkout <branch>" is to "check
out the branch so that further work is done on that branch", I don't
believe that means it has to be stated first. In fact, I would say
that there are enough other use cases that the language should be
slightly more use-case agnostic in the first situation. For example,
someone might switch to another branch or commit simply to see what
state the tree was in at that point.

I've been deliberately avoiding the term "switch", actually.  I
agree that it may be familiar to people with prior exposure to
subversion, but that is not the primary audience of the manual.

I don't have much experience with svn, so I didn't make that
connection. Independent of svn usage, what is wrong with the term
'switch'?

I would be interested to hear how translators communicate the checkout
concept, as I assume the word checkout doesn't exist in many
languages. For me, switching between revisions is a natural way of
phrasing the action, but perhaps there is a better way of saying the
same thing?

quoted

Some people use checkout to
deploy a tag of the working tree onto a production server. The first
example in particular is, I think, a common enough operation that
restricting the opening lines of documentation to talking about
building further work is misleading.

I agree with you that sightseeing use case where you do not intend
to make any commit is also important.  That is exactly why I said
"further work is done on that branch" not "to that branch" in the
message you are responding to.

Ah ok, I didn't pick up on that nuance. Your suggestion from earlier
has, for example, "Prepare to work on building new history on
<branch>" which *is* excluding that use case. Perhaps modifying
similar lines to something like "Prepare to work with the
repository/history/something from <branch>" or maybe just "Prepare to
work with <branch>" would better encapsulate those use cases.
Following lines would expand on what it means to work with a branch or
commit, and the technical details of updates to the repositories
current state.

Regards,

Andrew Ardill