Re: [RFC variant 2 of 2] "needs update" considered harmful

From: Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>
Date: Jul 20, 2008, 11:29 UTC
Message-ID: <20080720112957.GE32184@machine.or.cz>
In-Reply-To: <7v7ibhdmii.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:48:21AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 19 quoted lines

> "git update-index --refresh", "git reset" and "git add --refresh" have
> reported paths that have local modifications as "needs update" since the
> beginning of git.
> 
> Although this is logically correct in that you need to update the index at
> that path before you can commit that change, it is now becoming more and
> more clear, especially with the continuous push for user friendliness
> since 1.5.0 series, that the message is suboptimal.  After all, the change
> may be something the user might want to get rid of, and "updating" would
> be absolutely a wrong thing to do if that is the case.
> 
> I prepared two alternatives to solve this.  Both aim to reword the message
> to more neutral "locally modified".
> 
> This patch is a more straightforward variant that changes the message not
> only for Porcelain commands ("add" and "reset") but also changes the
> output from the plumbing command "update-index".
> 
> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>

I believe this is a good thing. Scripts need to be modified for the reorganization anyway, and I'm not sure if there are any actually depening on this particular string. I think having inconsistent error messaging is worse in long term.

FWIW, looking at Cogito,

	cg-Xlib: git-update-index --refresh | sed 's/needs update$/locally modified/'

is the only reference to this. ;-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know
its true name.  -- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie