Re: What's cooking in git.git (Aug 2010, #02; Wed, 11)

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <avarab@gmail.com>
Date: Aug 12, 2010, 02:33 UTC
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=5biMga0=nAVwQLNd1jEJXXtUJBqdhuyt-YoWv@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20100812014107.GA18937@burratino>

On Thu, Aug 12, 2010 at 01:41, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 12 quoted lines

> Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> * jn/commit-no-change-wo-status (2010-07-24) 9 commits
>>  . commit: suppress status summary when no changes staged
>>  . commit --dry-run: give advice on empty amend
> ...
>
> Could you revert the tip of this one?  What remains is a good
> cleanup (+ change in --dry-run output for consistency), I think.
>
> There was no positive feedback about suppressing the status summary.
> I am afraid it might be a bad idea; I’d be happy if people have other
> ideas for making the output friendlier.

I think it's a little unfriendlier with this patch than without. With `color.ui = auto' on and `touch meh && git commit' you'll have "meh" pointed out to you in bright red as the thing you forgot, so you know what to "git add".

Just saying that you need to "git add" doesn't give you that context.

But maybe the wall of text from "git status" can be a bit confusing to users, especially in the pathological case. Perhaps one way to solve that would be to give the message more color:

    $ git commit
A   # On branch master
    # Untracked files:
    #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
    #
X   #       blahblah
Y   nothing added to commit but untracked files present (use "git add" to track)

X is now red, but Y is the same color as the rest of the message. Maybe we could give that the "info" color (used in e.g. test-lib.sh). Then users might read it as Y->X->A instead of A->X->Y.

But I don't know, the "git commit" output doesn't confuse me so I'm not in the target audience.