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When you have to checkout the master branch
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
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it has always bothered me that checkout is overloaded: it can switch branches or discard pending changes in an unrecoverable way.
so, PSA, you can replicate the safe part of checkout with
git switchand the unsafe withgit restore.Ah, I love coherent software.
Switch and restore came later because checkout was problematic.
Has someone made a „Checkout considered harmful“ blog post yet or do we not do that anymore?
E we used to always stash before checkouts to try and find things in a branch
Just alias stuff like that, make it coherent.
I agree, I wonder why they decided to design it that way in the first place.
In both cases, checkout updates your working tree (by checking out either all or just some files from a commit), just when you're switching branches it moves your HEAD pointer too