Re: [PATCH] make color.ui default to 'auto'

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 15, 2013, 18:08 UTC
Message-ID: <7vppwsazg7.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <vpqwqr0azz7.fsf@grenoble-inp.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

Show 18 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:
>
>> I think you are missing the entire point, which is not "is anyone
>> harmed?"
>
> Again, it is. If the new default is really harmful for too many people,
> then documentations will have to mention how to fix it.
>
> And really, I do not forsee any newbie-oriented starting with "here's
> how to disable colors in case you need it", because of the reasons
> mentionned in the message.
>
>> Our recommendation has been "use color=auto"
>
> Not really. Neither Documentation/gittutorial.txt nor
> Documentation/user-manual.txt mention colors. Pro Git mentions it, but
> more as a possibility than as a recommandation. This is the
> recommandation of the rest of the world, not "ours".

Do you mean the git users who learn and use Git without being in the circle of people who updates Documentation/ hierarchy "the rest of the world"?

I think that is a flawed mentality.  They are part of "us".

> It's not "either we update the docs or we update the code", it's "follow
> what the rest of the world is doing", and "rest of the world" has to
> imply a notion of majority (not all tutorials talk about color.ui).

Yes, exactly.

Read the statement you made again, with the assumption that everybody ("the rest of the world") already knows (and/or agreed to) colouring is a good thing.

Show 7 quoted lines

> ... Other beginners do not know about
> color.ui=auto, and may not discover it by themselves, hence live with
> black&white outputs while they may have prefered colors.
>
> A few people (e.g. color-blind) prefer having no colors, but they can
> easily set color.ui=never for this (and googling "disable colors in git"
> already tells them how to do so).

Now, realize that after switching the default, these "few people" have to live with distracting (or unreadable) output. Because these people are minority, their websearch "disable colors in git" will by definition have smaller number of hits than "enable colors in git" the above claims people "may not discover it by themselves". In a way, you are making things even harder because these minority do not have many similar others to ask help for.

That is the honest way to express what you said in the second paragraph.

If we really want to justify the changing of the default, we should not try to weasel out by using asymmetric wording from the fact that we are making things less convenient for one kind of people. We should be honest and say what we are doing: "it will make things easier for majority while making it less convenient for minority".

I am however saying that in this case, we are better off not even trying to come up with such a lame excuse for us to hurt color-blind people in order to make things easier for majority. Just saying "the rest of the world prefer automatic color and that is what we recommend, so make the code match" should be sufficient.