Re: [RFC PATCH] checkout: add synonym of -b

[Junio C Hamano]

Mikkel Kjeldsen  writes:

> Add --new-branch as a long-form synonym of -b. I occasionally encounter
> some confusion in new users having interpreted "checkout -b" to mean
> "checkout branch", or internalized it as "the way to create a new
> branch" rather than merely a convenience for "branch && checkout". I
> think an explicit long-form can help alleviate that.
>
> Signed-off-by: Mikkel Kjeldsen 
> ---
>
> Notes:
> This makes the synopsis and description lines look a little clumsy (and
> I think incorrect...?) so if this proposal is accepted perhaps those
> parts are better left out. It is meant more for training and
> documentation than regular usage, anyway.

Sounds like even you (who wrote this patch) expect the long form
option to be impractical for regular usage and everybody would end
up using the -b form?

I am borderline "Meh" on this change, slightly on the negative side,
primarily because we'd need to worry about what to do with "-B" if
we did this to "-b", and I do not think it is worth even spending
brain cycles to worry about it (e.g. should it be
--force-new-branch?  should --new-branch used together with --force
a better-looking alternative?  if we were to add --force, how should
it interact with other existing options the command support? etc.)

But let's hear what others think.

Thanks.

[RFC PATCH] checkout: add synonym of -b

[Mikkel Kjeldsen]

Add --new-branch as a long-form synonym of -b. I occasionally encounter
some confusion in new users having interpreted "checkout -b" to mean
"checkout branch", or internalized it as "the way to create a new
branch" rather than merely a convenience for "branch && checkout". I
think an explicit long-form can help alleviate that.

Signed-off-by: Mikkel Kjeldsen 
---

Notes:
This makes the synopsis and description lines look a little clumsy (and
I think incorrect...?) so if this proposal is accepted perhaps those
parts are better left out. It is meant more for training and
documentation than regular usage, anyway.

I thought I had seen something like "--create-branch" in use by another
command and had intended to use that but I can no longer find that and
so went with "--new-branch" named after the option's argument.

There does not seem to be a practice for testing short- versus long-form
arguments so I did not include one, but I'd be happy to.

 Documentation/git-checkout.txt | 5 +++--
 builtin/checkout.c | 2 +-
 t/t9902-completion.sh  | 1 +
 3 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
index 801de2f764..7651d8b83d 100644
--- a/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
+++ b/Documentation/git-checkout.txt
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ SYNOPSIS
 'git checkout' [-q] [-f] [-m] []
 'git checkout' [-q] [-f] [-m] --detach []
 'git checkout' [-q] [-f] [-m] [--detach] 
-'git checkout' [-q] [-f] [-m] [[-b|-B|--orphan] ] []
+'git checkout' [-q] [-f] [-m] [[(-b|--new-branch)|-B|--orphan] ] 
[]
 'git checkout'