Re: [PATCH] cherry-pick: No advice to commit if --no-commit

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Feb 21, 2012, 22:31 UTC
Message-ID: <7v1upng6n7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20120221222049.GA31934@burratino>

Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> +	if (show_hint) {
>>  		advise(_("after resolving the conflicts, mark the corrected paths\n"
>> +			 "with 'git add <paths>' or 'git rm <paths>'"));
>> +		if (!opts->no_commit)
>> +			advise(_( "and commit the result with 'git commit'"));
>
> "cherry-pick --no-commit" was not about to commit, but the user might
> have been.  I think the hint is intended to convey that authorship
> will be correctly preserved if the user continues with "git commit"
> and no special -c option is necessary.

Actually, an often used but perhaps neglected use case of "cherry-pick --no-commit" is to use it as a substitute for

	git show $that_commit | git apply [--index]

to lift the change from $that_commit and incorporate it into your unrelated (from the point of view of the author of $that_commit) work. The user would be doing "edit $this_file" and "edit $that_file" before or after the "show | apply" aka "cherry-pick --no-commit", and it is merely a type-saver, not having to re-type the change $that_commit introduced relative to its parent.

So in that context, I can understand the suggestion to commit is at best annoying ("I am still working on the current change. Why do you talk about committing?") and at worst alarming and misleading ("Oh, am I to lose some change if I do not commit right now?").

Show 8 quoted lines

> A smaller detail: splitting the message into two like this gives
> translators less control over how to phrase the message and where to
> wrap lines.  Luckily that is easy to fix with
>
> 	if (opts->no_commit)
> 		advise(...);
> 	else
> 		advise(...);

Yes, this pattern must be followed in the reroll.

Thanks for a review and comment.