Re: [RFC PATCH v2 0/6] Noobify format for status, add, restore

> On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 03:32:40PM +0200, Dragan Simic wrote:
>> On 2023-10-27 00:46, Jacob Stopak wrote:
>> > Take into account reviewer feedback by doing several things differently:
>> >
>> >   * Rename this feature (for now) as "noob format mode" (or just "noob
>> >     mode") instead of the original "--table" verbiage. As pointed out,
>> >     this no longer ties the name of the setting to it's proposed
>> >     implementation detail as a table. Noob mode is not necessarily the
>> >     right name, just a placeholder for now. Unless people like it :D
>> >
>> >   * Instead of manually having to invoke the -t, --table every time this
>> >     format is to be used, set the config option "status.noob" to true.
>> >     Although this is logically tied to the status command, there are
>> > many
>> >     commands that produce status output, (and this series adds more), so
>> >     assume that if the user wants to see the status this way, that it
>> >     should be enabled whenever the status info is displayed.
>> 
>> How would "status.noob" relate to and coexist with possible future
>> configuration options named "<command>.verbose", which would be 
>> somewhat
>> similar to the currently existing "commit.verbose" option?  IOW, 
>> perhaps it
>> would be better to have per-command options "<command>.verbose = noob" 
>> or,
>> even better, "<command>.verbose = extended", to make it all more
>> future-proof and more granular.
> 
> Hmm, do there currently exist other <command>.verbose config settings
> besides for commit? From what I can tell from "git help config", the
> commit.verbose setting is the only one I see, and it just adds the diff
> info into the editor if the user runs git commit without the -m flag, 
> but
> otherwise there seems to be no extra verbosity outputted.

> I noticed that git add and git mv have "verbose" (-v, --verbose) cli 
> flags
> which just output the name of the file being added or renamed, and that
> certain other commands like git branch has a verbose output which 
> includes
> the branch head commit hash and message in the output, so I guess this 
> one
> is actually kindof verbose in that it outputs more than the non-empty
> default output.

> So it seems like currently "verbose" is used for various things among 
> the
> command set, sometimes meaning "add something into the template if one 
> is
> used" or "add some tiny output to a command that has no default output"
> (which still seems more "--shy" than "--verbose" :P) or "add some
> additional output to a command that already has some sparse output".

> Another thing is that commands like status have multiple flags that can 
> be
> used to specify the output format, such as --short, --long, 
> --porcelain,
> etc, but only --short seems to be configurable as a git config setting.
> Is there a reason (besides backward compatibility I guess) that these
> aren't rolled into a single thing like --format=<type>? This seems like
> it would be the easiest way to future proof for new formats like
> --format=verbose, --format=noob, --format=extended, etc.

> From a noob's perspective though, does adding a config setting for each
> command really make sense? I'm kindof envisioning this setting now as a
> "mode" that is either enabled for all commands it affects or for none.
> And it's highly unlikely a newish user would individually discover 
> which
> commands this "extended" format is available for, and run "git config
> <command>.verbose = extended" for every one. I mean we could do that
> in case there are folks who only want it for specific commands, but to
> fulfill it's purpose I think there should definetely be some general 
> way
> to enable the setting for all commands that have it.