Re: [PATCH] branch -l: print useful info whilst rebasing a non-local branch

On Sunday 25 March 2018 10:03 AM, Jeff King wrote:

...
but I'd prefer to avoid those kinds of magic rules if we can. They're
very hard to explain to the user, and can be quite baffling when they go
wrong.

I fell the same too.

IMHO we should do one of:

  1. Nothing. ;)

  2. Complain about "-l" in list mode to help educate users about the
     current craziness.

  3. Drop "-l" (probably with a deprecation period); it seems unlikely
     to me that anybody uses it for branch creation, and this would at
     least reduce the confusion (then it would just be "so why don't we
     have -l" instead of "why is -l not what I expect").

  4. Repurpose "-l" as a shortcut for --list (also after a deprecation
     period). This is slightly more dangerous in that it may confuse
     people using multiple versions of Git that cross the deprecation
     line. But that's kind of what the deprecation period is for...

I think we should do 2 as a short term fix for sure. For the long term,
I would prefer 4 as I think most users would expect "-l" to be a
shortcut for "--list" particularly given the current situation that "git
branch -l" lists all the branch names.

That said, I would not mind considering 3 if 4 has more bad consequences
than the good it does (but I heavily doubt it ;-) ).

I don't consider 1 to be an option ;-)


-- 
Kaartic