Re: Changing the defaults for send-email / suppress-cc ?

From: Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com>
Date: Mar 1, 2009, 01:32 UTC
Message-ID: <7d1d9c250902281732m7293330bt108b70a850dc5cb9@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <7vsklycct9.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 17 quoted lines

> Paul Gortmaker <paul.gortmaker@windriver.com> writes:
>
>> In light of this, I've simply advised new users to run something like:
>>
>> git config --global sendemail.suppresscc all
>>
>> ...just so that they won't accidentally do what I've described in the above.
>
>> Apologies if this has been discussed before; I took a quick scan of my
>> archive and didn't see any discussions on it.
>
> I think I've seen discussions in the distant past but not very recently.
> IIRC some people had exactly the same reaction as you did, and were loud,
> while others were happy with the default, but weren't as loud.
>
> But loudness depends on how annoyed they are, and unhappy people are
> louder than others, so we cannot judge much from the loudness alone.

Thanks for the reply -- I'm not interested in being "loud" ;-) But I think I'm in an interesting situation where I see people who are not necessarily wanting to use git, but are required to use git in order to do their daily activities. So they approach it with some apprehension and, given what human nature is, are looking for reasons to justify that apprehension.

Show 10 quoted lines

>
>> With the recent thread
>> about warning people of non-back compatible changes that will appear
>> post 1.6.2 -- I thought perhaps this was a good time to
>> mention/consider it.
>
> Unless you are a single project person, or have groups of hosts that share
> the home directory that is dedicated for working only on a single project,
> using $HOME/.gitconfig for this is a bad advice to give in general; as I
> think this really depends on what you are working on.

Yes, well it is the right solution for the new users I'm working with, since I know what their focus is, but that wasn't really where I wanted the discussion to focus.

My point was that I've seen these new users get scared off by having git send-email essentially embarrass them, and that it would be a shame to have people in general get the wrong impression about git from this one small setting, when it is such a useful tool. Really, it does tend to violate the principle of least surprise for the new user. If there is a new user who is a bit apprehensive about git, the defaults for "suppress-cc" can give them all the evidence they need to justify their fear of it, and then the FUD starts. So, I think this is a case where "do nothing, unless explicitly asked" is perhaps the wise choice. That was the only thing I wanted to draw attention to.

Thanks, Paul.