From: Jay Soffian Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 18:17:22 GMT Subject: Re: [RFC] "needs update" considered harmful Message-ID: <76718490807211117t3c1d1194tee1c5dca686df8be@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <7v1w1pdmi8.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 3:48 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote: > The previous two variants both aim to reword the somewhat unpopular "needs > update" message to easier "locally modified". As a git beginner I would still be a confused. I think git beginners need to understand three concepts very early: - committed changes - staged changes - unstaged changes I think saying "unstaged changes" instead of "locally modified" would be consistent with the git add and rm man pages and less confusing. On a related note, I don't understand the need for two different messages here: $ echo stuff >> foo $ git co master error: You have local changes to 'foo'; cannot switch branches. $ git add foo $ git co master error: Entry 'foo' would be overwritten by merge. Cannot merge. A single message "You have uncommitted changes to 'foo'; cannot switch branches." would suffice, no? $0.02. j.