Re: [PATCH] Make git revert warn the user when reverting a merge commit.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Dec 19, 2008, 06:35 UTC
Message-ID: <7vljucd64b.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <200812182354.16269.bss@iguanasuicide.net>

"Boyd Stephen Smith Jr." <bss@iguanasuicide.net> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> In addition, I think a one-time-per-user warning would be nice, but I'm not 
> sure the best way to implement that.  My initial thoughts would be reading a 
> boolean config option, if unset/true issuing the warning and then if unset 
> set it to false.  However, that seems a bit... unclean and I fear there might 
> be a policy against writing ~/.gitconfig configuration options from a 
> subcommand other than 'git config'.  Any suggestions on the implementation?

As an end user, I find one-time-per-user warning more frustrating than it is worth. I may see the warning issued for the first time of my using certain feature, and because I am so novice to the program suite that I do not fully understand what the warning is trying to say when I see it. Thanks to the "one-time-per-user"-ness, that is the only chance for me to see the message --- which often means that I won't see the warning before the gravity of it has any chance to really sink in my mind.

"You can set i-know-what-i-am-doing in your ~/.xyzzyconfig file to squelch this message" is slightly better, as (1) I can control when I stop seeing it, and (2) because setting that in my config is done by me, as opposed to the tool doing behind my back, it is much more likely for me to recall how to get the warning back when I choose to see it again.

The above discussion is "in general". In this particular case, I am not convinced if the warning itself is worth it, though.