Re: [PATCH] fsck: do not print dangling objects by default

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Feb 27, 2012, 19:18 UTC
Message-ID: <20120227191846.GB1600@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <7vhayddxgp.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sun, Feb 26, 2012 at 02:46:46PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 22 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
> 
> > I think that both the ultimate goal explained above, and the direction in
> > which the documentation updates tries to move us, are good.  I only gave a
> > cursory look at the code changes, but what they implement seems to match
> > the intention.
> >
> > Of course I may be missing something, so objections from others to argue
> > why we shouldn't do this is very much welcomed to stop me and Clemens ;-).
> 
> Let's start with the obvious.
> 
> It is much easier for a user to use a new option on the command line when
> he wants to use an improved behaviour when he runs the command manually.
> Having to update scripts that run the command to act on its output, on the
> other hand, is much more painful to the users.
> 
> And the intended audience for this change clearly is interactive users
> that follow the user-manual to try things out.
> 
> Given that, isn't it not just sufficient but actually better to instead
> add a new --no-dangling option and keep the default unchanged?

But if your intended audience is users who are confused by the dangling warnings, explaining to them to use --no-dangling is not really improving the situation. Of course, it is fsck, so I wonder how often clueless people are really running it in the first place (i.e., it is not and should not be part of most users' typical workflows). If it is simply the case that they are being told to run "git fsck" by more expert users without understanding what it does, then I could buy the argument that those expert users could just as easily say "git fsck --no-dangling".

-Peff