Hi, On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, John Tapsell wrote: > 2009/3/12 Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@xxxxxx>: > > > On Thu, 12 Mar 2009, John Tapsell wrote: > > > >> One of my collegues did: > >> > >> git checkout origin/somebranch > >> > >> git complained that they need to specify the name with -b. So they did: > >> > >> git checkout -b origin/somebranch origin/somebranch > > > > Yeah, a pilot error. It should have been > > > > $ git checkout -t origin/somebranch > > Maybe the error message for "git checkout origin/somebranch" should > suggest: git checkout -t origin/somebranch? > > > I have to wonder, though, why "git checkout origin/somebranch" did not > > detach your HEAD. > > It did. But that doesn't affect doing "git checkout -b > origin/somebranch origin/somebranch" afterwards. So did the warning read something like this? -- snip -- moving to "d36a18dc9cdf1dfce8632e42491b826387aa3230" which isn't a local branch If you want to create a new branch from this checkout, you may do so (now or later) by using -b with the checkout command again. Example: git checkout -b <new_branch_name> -- snap -- ? If so, why did you not follow the recipe $ git checkout -b somebranch but something like $ git checkout -b origin/somebranch origin/somebranch ? I do not think there is a way to tell the user more explicitely what to do without insulting the user's intelligence ;-) > > I wonder why you did not just "git branch -m somebranch". > > Because they didn't know what on earth was going on, and git was > spitting out errors everywhere, they were afraid git would crash. Yeah, I know those reactions. All of a sudden, people panic, destroying everything in the process. Do tell them to calm down first of all. Unless you do something like "rm -rf .git" or "git branch -d", it is actually pretty hard to lose data with Git. Ciao, Dscho
