Re: Enabling scissors by default?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Jan 8, 2013, 23:36 UTC
Message-ID: <7vr4lvb63a.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <50ECAAE2.2020507@ubuntu.com>

Phillip Susi <psusi@ubuntu.com> writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

> On 01/08/2013 05:42 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> It is very easy to miss misidentification of scissors line; as a 
>> dangerous, potentially information losing option, I do not think
>> it should be on by default.
>
> I suppose if it only requires one instance of >8 or <8 and one -, it
> might be *slightly* dangerous, but if it required a slightly longer
> minimum line length, it would be pretty darn unlikely to get triggered
> by accident, and of course, is easily disabled.

"Easily disabled" is never a good enough reason to change the long established default of not doing anything funky unless the user explicitly asks it to do things differently.

You could introduce a new configuration variable "am.scissors" and personally turn it on, though. Setting that variable *does* count as the user explicitly asking for it.

> I often see patches being tweaked in response to feedback and
> resubmitted, usually with a description of what has changed since the
> previous version.  Such descriptions don't need to be in the change
> log when it is finally applied and seem a perfect use of scissors.

Putting such small logs under "---" line is the accepted practice.