On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 14:09, Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Michael Witten <mfwitten@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> Well, as Junio mentioned, "--orphan" could be deprecated in favor of >> "--no-parent"; the uncommon nature of this task works to our >> advantage, in that it makes a deprecation of "--orphan" easy. > > I agree that _some_ cases would be more natural with commit --no-parent, > but I disagree that it is a better solution in general. > > For example > > # I want to create a new root commit with a different tree > git rm -fr * > vi file-in-new-project.txt > git add file-in-new-project.txt > # continue hacking for a while > git commit -m "New project" # oops, I forgot the --no-parent > > History is not destroyed and you can still "git reset" back to the > previous commit, but you've at least temporarily damaged your branch > (and no --force flag could have prevented it). With "git checkout > --orphan" in the above scenario, you run the command at the time you > take the decision you want to create a root commit, and then hack > normally. > > Even if you use it normally: > > # I want to create a new root commit with a different tree > git checkout -b new-project > # hack for a while > git status > # ?!? why are files shown as 'deleted', 'moved', 'modified', I said I > # was creating a new project! > > Also, with your proposal, we would need to add two flags to "commit" > (--no-parent and --force), which is one of the first command beginners > learn, while in the current state we have just one for "checkout" to do > the trick, and newbies do not use or read the doc for checkout, so it's > not scary for them. Well, those are mildly interesting scenarios. I can only say that I don't think we should cater to people who either have amnesia or work casually on a repository for short bursts every few months or so. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html