Re: [PATCH v5 7/8] checkout: add advice for ambiguous "checkout <branch>"

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 5:10 PM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
[off-list ref] wrote:

As the "checkout" documentation describes:

    If <branch> is not found but there does exist a tracking branch in
    exactly one remote (call it <remote>) with a matching name, treat
    as equivalent to [...] <remote>/<branch.

This is a really useful feature. The problem is that when you and

s/and/add/

another remote (e.g. a fork) git won't find a unique branch name

Missing comma: s/)/),/

anymore, and will instead print this nondescript message:

Perhaps s/nondescript/unhelpful/ ?

    $ git checkout master
    error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git

Now it will, on my git.git checkout, print:

    $ ./git --exec-path=$PWD checkout master
    error: pathspec 'master' did not match any file(s) known to git.
    hint: The argument 'master' matched more than one remote tracking branch.
    hint: We found 26 remotes with a reference that matched. So we fell back
    hint: on trying to resolve the argument as a path, but failed there too!
    hint:
    hint: If you meant to check out a remote tracking branch on e.g. 'origin'

Missing commas: s/on e.g. 'origin'/on, e.g. 'origin',/

    hint: you can do so by fully-qualifying the name with the --track option:

s/fully-qualifying/fully qualifying/

    hint:
    hint:     git checkout --track origin/<name>

Signed-off-by: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <redacted>

Aside from the s/and/add/ botch, all of the above are tiny nits which
don't actually impact the meaning of the commit message, thus not
really important.

You could drop "The argument" prefix, without hurting the meaning at
all, in order to gain a bit more horizontal space for the '%s'
interpolation. (Not worth a re-roll.)

+                                "We found %d remotes with a reference that matched. So we fell back\n"
+                                "on trying to resolve the argument as a path, but failed there too!\n"
+                                "\n"
+                                "If you meant to check out a remote tracking branch on e.g. 'origin'\n"
+                                "you can do so by fully-qualifying the name with the --track option:\n"
+                                "\n"
+                                "    git checkout --track origin/<name>"),
+                              argv[0],
+                              dwim_remotes_matched);