Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] launch_editor(): indicate that Git waits for user input

From: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
Date: Dec 4, 2017, 21:42 UTC
Message-ID: <20171204214221.GB21552@sigill.intra.peff.net>
In-Reply-To: <07CF6EAE-815E-4846-887D-560F2459E69D@gmail.com>

On Mon, Dec 04, 2017 at 10:31:15PM +0100, Lars Schneider wrote:

Show 20 quoted lines

> >> I would like to add "for your input" or "for you" to convey 
> >> that Git is not waiting for the machine but for the user.
> >> 
> >>    "hint: Launched editor. Waiting for your input..."
> >> 
> >> Would that work for you?
> > 
> > I guess "input" was the part that I found funny/confusing. The only
> > thing we know is that we're waiting on the editor process to finish, and
> > everything else is making assumptions about what's happening in the
> > editor.
> 
> I see. How about:
> 
> "hint: Launched editor. Waiting for your action..."
> (my preference)
> 
> or
> 
> "hint: Launched editor. Waiting for you..."

Better, IMHO, though I still think literally saying:

  hint: Waiting for your editor to exit...

is the most accurate, which I think makes it clear that you must _exit_ your editor, not just save and close the file.

I dunno, maybe that is being overly paranoid. Certainly I have seen graphical programs that have a mismatch with the one-process-per-action way that most terminal editors view the world, and would hang around even after the user thinks they are done editing. But at the same time, those programs are unlikely to work well as $GIT_EDITOR in the first place, because running them from the terminal may just open a new window in an existing session and exit immediately (which is the opposite problem -- the editor exited before the user actually did their thing).

So I'm not sure if that would be a problem in practice or not. I'm too mired in the vim world to have any real data. Somebody like you who is supporting a large number of less-Unixy users probably has more perspective there.

-Peff