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Should sendemail.confirm default to always?

From
Alyssa Ross <hi@alyssa.is>
Date
Apr 21, 2022, 19:48 UTC
Message-ID
<20220421194832.lshqkl3bogy2f2hy@eve>

I was recently having a conversation with some people used to the GitHub-style Pull Request workflow, who told me that they feel scared of using git send-email in case they make a mistake and e.g. get the recipients wrong, since they can't correct it after sending. They can resend, but if they do that they'll feel like they're bothering some very busy people by having sent them the same message twice (regardless of whether those people are actually bothered by it, it's scary).

This made me remember feeling that same sense of fear when I used git send-email the first few times. At some point I discovered that I could set sendemail.confirm to always, and then git would always prompt me before sending a message, and I could review the recipients list, edit the message if I wanted to, etc. After that, I was happy, and completely forgot that that wasn't the default behaviour until having this conversation.

So I thought it was worth asking, might it be a good idea to change the default, and have git always prompt before sending mail unless it's told otherwise? Expert users will be able to figure out how to change this default if they don't like it, but novice users won't have bad first experiences where they accidentally send out an email before they were ready any more.

I don't think this change would cause too much hassle for people expecting the current default, because the current default is for git to prompt *sometimes*. So anybody who doesn't like being prompted is likely to have already disabled it.

These git users (who are probably in the majority!) are used to having edit and delete buttons, so for them the idea of having to get things right the first time is scary enough with a preview, let alone without one. I hope you can empathize.

Thanks!
Alyssa Ross
Next: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
Message 1 of 15 in “Should sendemail.confirm default to always?”
  1. Alyssa RossApr 21, 2022
  2. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonApr 21, 2022
  3. Junio C HamanoApr 21, 2022
  4. Failures in t9001-send-emailAlyssa Ross, Apr 21, 2022
  5. rsbecker@nexbridge.comApr 21, 2022
  6. Alyssa RossApr 22, 2022
  7. rsbecker@nexbridge.comApr 22, 2022
  8. Johannes SixtApr 22, 2022
  9. Junio C HamanoApr 22, 2022
  10. Alyssa RossApr 22, 2022
  11. send-email: always confirm by defaultAlyssa Ross, Apr 22, 2022
  12. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonApr 22, 2022
  13. Junio C HamanoApr 22, 2022
  14. Junio C HamanoApr 21, 2022
  15. Alyssa RossApr 21, 2022

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