On Sun, 2017-04-16 at 22:25 +0100, Philip Oakley wrote:
> From: "Christoph Michelbach" <michelbach94@xxxxxxxxx>
> > It's: git checkout [-p|--patch] [<tree-ish>] [--] <pathspec>...
> The one I quoted is direct from the Synopsis, which does indicate
> there are
> potentially more aspects to resolve, such as the influence of using
> the
> [-p|--patch] options.
Oh, you are right. I didn't even notice the one in the synopsis doesn't
match the one further down. The one in the synopsis is wrong because
after removing the optional parameters, it's the same as the first one
in the synopsis, yet we expect very different behavior from them.
> It maybe that the paragraph / sentence that needs adjusting is;
>
> 'git checkout' with <paths> or `--patch` is used to restore modified
> or
> deleted paths to their original contents from the index or replace
> paths
> with the contents from a named <tree-ish> (most often a commit-ish).
>
> and split it at the "or replace paths" option to pick out your
> specific
> case.
This one is confusing, too: Paths can lead to folders, yet folders whose
contents have been modified are not restored to their original contents
when executing that command. Only files are.
After reading the documentation and having never used the command
before, one would expect
#!/bin/bash
rm -Rf repo
mkdir repo
cd repo
git init &> /dev/null
mkdir folder
echo a > folder/a
git add -A
git commit -m "Commit 1." &> /dev/null
echo b > folder/b
git add -A
git commit -m "Commit 2." &> /dev/null
echo c > folder/c
git add -A
git commit -m "Commit 3." &> /dev/null
git checkout `git log --pretty=format:%H | tail -1` folder
ls folder
to print `a`. However, it prints `a b c` because all of the files inside
`folder` which have been modified or deleted since (here: none) are
reset to their original state after the first commit, but `folder`
itself isn't. Yet, the only path which was passed to the command in
question is `folder`.
In my opinion, this command needs improved documentation (and the
synopsis needs to be fixed).
--
Christoph