On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 01:28:35PM -0400, Eric Sunshine wrote: > > > Again, not much of a datapoint, but I do use --orphan periodically. > > > The idea of "fixing" the behavior so that --orphan starts with a clean > > > slate is certainly appealing (since it matches how I've used orphan > > > branches in each case). > > > > The only three people who have commented on --orphan in this thread > > all apparently feel the same way: the current behavior is wrong. > > Maybe we can switch it to start with an empty index after all? > > Starting empty may match intuition better. (More importantly, perhaps, > it's harder to come up with a use-case for --orphan which doesn't > involve starting with a clean slate.) OK so the new --orphan description would be like this, right? --8<-- --orphan <new-branch>:: Create a new 'orphan' branch, named `<new-branch>`. If `<start-point>` is specified, the working tree is adjusted to match it. The index remains empty (i.e. no file is tracked). -->8-- I was wondering if instead of the empty index, we mark on files from <start-point> as intent-to-add. That way "git commit -a" achieves the same as before, but you could still carefully craft the new index and "git commit". Dunno. Not going to implement it unless somebody says something, since I rarely (if ever?) use --orphan. I may need someone to come up with a convincing commit message too. All I've got is "I've been told this is a good thing to do" :) -- Duy
