On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 6:32 PM Jacob Abel <jacobabel@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> While working with the worktree based git workflow, I realised that setting
> up a new git repository required switching between the traditional and
> worktree based workflows. Searching online I found a SO answer [1] which
> seemed to support this and which indicated that adding support for this should
> not be technically difficult.
>
> * adding orphan branch functionality (as is present in `git-switch`)
> to `git-worktree-add`
I haven't had a chance yet to read v3, but can we take a step back for
a moment and look at this topic from a slightly different angle?
Setting aside the value of adding --orphan to `git worktree add`
(which, I'm perfectly fine with, as mentioned earlier), I have a
question about whether the solution proposed by this series is the
best we can do.
As I understand it, the actual problem this series wants to solve is
that it's not possible to create a new worktree from an empty bare
repository; for instance:
% git init --bare foo.git
% git -C foo.git worktree add -b main bar
Preparing worktree (new branch 'main')
fatal: not a valid object name: 'HEAD'
%
This series addresses that shortcoming by adding --orphan, so that the
following works:
% git init --bare foo.git
% git -C foo.git worktree add --orphan main bar
Preparing worktree (new branch 'main')
%
However, is this really the best and most user-friendly and most
discoverable solution? Is it likely that users are somehow going to
instinctively use --orphan when they see the "fatal: not a valid
object name: 'HEAD'" error message?
Wouldn't a better solution be to somehow fix `git worktree add -b
<branch>` so that it just works rather than erroring out? I haven't
delved into the implementation to determine if this is possible, but
if it is, it seems a far superior "fix" for the problem shown above
since it requires no extra effort on the user's part, and doesn't
raise any discoverability red-flags (since nothing needs to be
"discovered" if `-b <branch>` works as expected in the first place).
If fixing `-b <branch>` to "just work" is possible, then --orphan is
no longer a needed workaround but becomes "icing on the cake".
> Changes from v2:
>
> * Changed orphan creation behavior to match `git switch --orphan` instead of
> `git checkout --orphan` [2][3]. As a result `--orphan` no longer accepts a
> `<commit-ish>` and creates the orphan branch with a clean working directory.
Thanks for making this change.
