Meaning of Git checkout double dashes
Solution 1:
Suppose I have a file named path/to/file.txt
in my Git repository, and I want to revert changes on it.
git checkout path/to/file.txt
Now suppose that the file is named master
...
git checkout master
Whoops! That changed branches instead. The --
separates the tree you want to check out from the files you want to check out.
git checkout -- master
It also helps us if some freako added a file named -f
to our repository:
git checkout -f # wrong
git checkout -- -f # right
This is documented in git-checkout: Argument Disambiguation.
Solution 2:
The double dash "--" means "end of command line flags" i.e. it tells the preceding command not to try to parse what comes after command line options.