Re: [PATCH 2/2 (v3)] reset: make the output more user-friendly.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 23, 2009, 02:33 UTC
Message-ID: <7vmy5r1cpo.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <vpq8whc8euu.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@imag.fr> writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

> Intuitively, I would have thought that "git reset" was reporting what
> it was doing, as it was doing it. So to me (before experimenting a bit
> more and looking at the source code),
>
> M	foo.txt
> M	bar.txt
>
> would mean "I've just reseted foo.txt and bar.txt, which were locally
> modified", while actually "git reset" can very well show this message
> after reseting only foo.txt, just informing the user that bar.txt is
> also modified. So, at least to me, the semantics was very unclear, and
> while I would have understood immediately with the one-liner message.
>
> In short: no strong objection to remove this message, but to me it is
> usefull.

Thanks for sharing the reasoning.

Two conflicting/competing thoughts come to mind:

 1. Perhaps we should add a similar "explanation" for the list of paths
    with changes upon switching branches with "git checkout" for
    consistency.

 2. Such an "explanation" of what the output means would help the first
    time people, but would everybody stay "first time" forever?  Would the
    explanation become just another wasted line in valuable screen real
    estate after people gain experience?

I am leaning towards #1 right now.