checkout $tree $path: do not clobber local changes in $path not in $tree
Checking paths out of a tree is (currently) defined to do:
- Grab the paths from the named tree that match the given pathspec,
and add them to the index;
- Check out the contents from the index for paths that match the
pathspec to the working tree; and while at it
- If the given pathspec did not match anything, suspect a typo from the
command line and error out without updating the index nor the working
tree.
Suppose that the branch you are working on has dir/myfile, and the "other"
branch has dir/other but not dir/myfile. Further imagine that you have
either modified or removed dir/myfile in your working tree, but you have
not run "git add dir/myfile" or "git rm dir/myfile" to tell Git about your
local change. Running
$ git checkout other dir
would add dir/other to the index with the contents taken out of the
"other" branch, and check out the paths from the index that match the
pathspec "dir", namely, "dir/other" and "dir/myfile", overwriting your
local changes to "dir/myfile", even though "other" branch does not even
know about that file.
Fix it by updating the working tree only with the index entries that
was read from the "other" tree.