From: Teemu Likonen <tlikonen@iki.fi>
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:35:53 GMT
Subject: Re: [PATCH] merge, pull: introduce '--diffstat' option
Message-ID: <200804051835.54097.tlikonen@iki.fi>
In-Reply-To: <1207406935-22144-1-git-send-email-szeder@ira.uka.de>

SZEDER Gábor kirjoitti:

> At present, the 'merge --summary' command line option and
> 'merge.diffstat' config variable are controlling the same thing:
> whether to show a diffstat at the end of the merge or not.  This is
> inconsistent and confusing.

> But there is still a conflict between the 'merge.summary' config
> variable and the now not advertised '--summary' option, that should
> be resolved.

I very much agree with you: --summary/--no-summary are logical and 
intuitive equivalents of merge.summary, as are --diffstat/--no-diffstat 
to merge.diffstat.

How about this: Officially and explicitly deprecate --(no-)summary and 
advertise --(no-)diffstat as replacement. Also advertise that in some 
future release --(no-)summary will have different meaning (i.e. 
equivalent to merge.summary). There would be a reasonable (?) period 
before changing the meaning of --(no-)summary.

This is a bit hassle but I think in long term this would be a gain for 
Git's user interface. I believe these are not the kind of options that 
many scripts vitally depend on, so the change would be pretty safe I 
think.