[RFC/PATCH 0/4] make helpful messages optional

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Sep 6, 2009, 06:44 UTC
Message-ID: <20090906064454.GA1643@coredump.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <20090811120313.6117@nanako3.lavabit.com>

On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 12:03:13PM +0900, Nanako Shiraishi wrote:

Show 6 quoted lines

>  		error("failed to push some refs to '%s'", url[i]);
> +		if (nonfastforward) {
> +			printf("To prevent you from losing history, non-fast-forward updates were rejected.\n"
> +			       "Merge the remote changes before pushing again.\n"
> +			       "See 'non-fast forward' section of 'git push --help' for details.\n");
> +		}

I saw this message in regular use for the first time today, and I thought it was terribly ugly. The sheer number of lines, coupled with the extremely ragged right edge made it much harder to pick out the nicely formatted status table. And of course the information in the message was totally worthless to me, as an experienced git user.

So rather than re-open the debate on whether this message should exist or not, here is a patch series which tries to address the issue:

  [1/4]: push: fix english in non-fast-forward message

    Hopefully non-controversial.

  [2/4]: push: re-flow non-fast-forward message

    This makes it prettier, IMHO.  I suspect the message was flowed as
    it was originally on purpose so that each sentence began on its own
    line. I think making it easier on the eyes is more important,
    though.

  [3/4]: push: make non-fast-forward help message configurable

    I feel like we have had this exact sort of tension before: we want
    one thing to help new users and experienced users want another
    thing. We have resisted an "expert user" config variable in the past
    because proposals usually involved a change of behavior, which could
    lead to quite confusing results. However, I think the case of
    "helpful messages" is much simpler. The message is meant purely for
    human consumption and is redundant with information already given,
    so an expert sitting at a novice's terminal (or vice versa) will not
    encounter any surprises.

    This actually introduces infrastructure for other, similar messages,
    so that we can make existing ones optional, or build new ones as
    appropriate.

  [4/4]: status: make "how to stage" messages optional

    This uses the infrastructure in 3/4 to lose the "use git add to add
    untracked files" advice.

I think (1) and (2) are pretty straightforward. (3) and (4) are more questionable, and I am undecided whether I am over-reacting to being annoyed by the message. I do know this is not the first time I have had the urge to write such a patch, so maybe others feel the same.

-Peff