Re: [PATCH v3] git checkout: create unparented branch by --orphan

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Peter Baumann <waste.manager@xxxxxx> writes:

> Sorry to skim in so late but --orphan sounds - at least to me as a non native
> speaker - a little strange. Yes, I know it means "without parents", but
> actually it would be the *last* thing I would search for after opening the
> manpage.

I'm not native either, and "orphan" sounded strange in that we've never
used that word in any of our use case or workflow description in our
documents.

GitTips page of git wiki mentions this under "a new branch that has no
ancestor", and speaks of a way to add "a new and empty branch".  Scott
Chacon also creates "new empty branches" in the community book.

But if one compares them with what we discussed in the messages in the
threads on earlier iterations of this patch, one would realize that
neither of these pages is backed by enough thought/discussion on the
reason why the end user might want to do this in the first place; they
choose the word "empty" without even realizing that it describes only one
mode of operation (aka "no common paths" in our discussion) that a
disconnected history might be wanted by users.

The main point of the feature is not the emptyness of the resulting tree
(it is merely one possible outcome), but is the lack of parents in the
resulting commit.  So I would recommend against --empty.  --root might be
a good synonym, though, and we _do_ already use that word for that purpose
in some commands (e.g. "log --root").
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