Re: [PATCH] Hint at "checkout -p" in the "reset --patch <type>" error message

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Nov 25, 2010, 16:14 UTC
Message-ID: <20101125161446.GA24426@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <vpqbp5diei5.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 04:56:02PM +0100, Matthieu Moy wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> > The man page for git-reset points at git-checkout already.
> >
> > Until we have a "verbosity level" config across all commands, I don't
> > favor adding a lot of hints to command error messages.
> 
> I agree for "regular output", but this case is an error message that
> users should never see. If you see the message, it means you tried a
> command that doesn't exist, and I can't imagine a case where this
> would be disturbing to get an informative message pointing to the
> right command.

I have to agree. When I introduced advice.*, I had initially intended to have "advice.all" or similar, so expert users could shut off the verbose warnings.

But I found that I didn't really want it. Most of the advice is for messages like these that you just don't see that often, and the extra line of output is simply not that big a deal. For messages that you _do_ see every day (e.g., the help in "git status"), it is not so cumbersome to set the proper config option.

Which isn't to say I would be against "advice.all" (or even advice.commandSuggestions) if somebody submitted a patch for it. I just don't want it personally.

And I don't think any of this needs to hold up Štěpán's patch[1]. What has happened in the past is something like:

  1. Somebody introduces new messages. The patch makes it into next.

  2. A developer gets annoyed and creates a patch for advice.whatever.

  3. That patch goes on the appropriate topic and they make it into the
     release together.

which makes sense to me. Then we know the patch in (2) is not just bikeshedding, but actually fixes somebody's annoyance. :)

-Peff

[1] Don't take this as an endorsement of the patch. I think the intent is good, but I haven't reviewed it carefully to make sure "git reset -p --mixed" actually works as advertised. Today is American Thanksgiving, so I probably won't get to it for a few days.