On Fri, Nov 4, 2022 at 12:42 PM Jacob Abel <jacobabel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 22/11/04 01:03AM, Eric Sunshine wrote: > > On Thu, Nov 3, 2022 at 9:07 PM Jacob Abel <jacobabel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Are we sure we want to be modeling this after `git checkout --orphan`? > > If I understand correctly, that option has long been considered (by > > some) too clunky, which is why `git switch --orphan` was simplified to > > accept only a branch name but no commit-ish, and to start the orphan > > branch with an empty directory. My own feeling is that modeling it > > after `git switch --orphan` is probably the way to go... > > I would argue that the `git checkout --orphan` command format is preferable to > `git switch --orphan` when creating new worktrees. Reason being that in many > cases (except when working in a new repo), if you are trying to create a > worktree from an orphan you will be doing it with a different commit-ish > currently checked out in your worktree than the one you want to use for the > orphan (or you aren't in any worktree). I guess I'm not understanding the use-case being described here or that this series is trying to address. In my own experience, the very, very few times I've used --orphan was when I needed a branch with no existing history (i.e. "orphan") and with no existing files. For that use-case, `git switch --orphan` is ideal, whereas `git checkout --orphan` is a bother since it requires manually removing all content from the directory and clearing the index. > Requiring the commit-ish to be inferred would limit the user to checking out > an orphan from an existing worktree (in which case they could just create a > new worktree normally and use `git switch --orphan` to move that to an orphan > branch). I'm not following what you mean by inferred commit-ish. `git switch --orphan` does not infer any commit-ish; it starts the orphaned branch with an empty directory, hence there is no commit-ish involved. The `git switch --orphan` behavior was intentionally implemented to "fix" what has long been considered (by some) a UX botch in the behavior of `git checkout --orphan`. It was argued that in the vast majority of cases, people wanted an orphan branch to mean both "no history" and "no files". So, in that sense, it feels like a step backward to adopt `git checkout --orphan` when introducing `git worktree --orphan`. But, as I said, I'm genuinely not grasping your use-case, so I'm having trouble understanding why you consider `git checkout --orphan` a better model. If you can elaborate your use-case more thoroughly, perhaps it would help (at least me).
