Re: [RFC/GSOC] Git Beginner | Warnings for potentially destructive commands

From: Jacob Keller <jacob.keller@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 25, 2016, 19:20 UTC
Message-ID: <CA+P7+xqkqfccQtWeKbURZt21i+gw=b7f0YHHuqeNzM7TH2m+6g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqd1qi4fvi.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 10:38 AM, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:

Show 13 quoted lines

> The above two examples make me wonder if these should be static
> text.  "ggit rebase" and "ggit reset" have full information of the
> concrete branch names, commit object names and the actual topology
> of the history, so it should be able to give a description more
> tailored to the user's situation.  Instead of giving a fictional
> drawing with "For instance, Current state:", it should be able to
> draw the actual before-and-after picture based on where the end-user
> actually is.  I see _some_ attempts (e.g. with "<n>", mention of
> "(master)" and $BASE_BRANCH, you may have meant that they will be
> replaced with actual values), but I suspect that telling some truth
> (i.e. use of the real branch names) while showing pictures that do
> not match the reality (i.e. if the topology and the description are
> done as fixed text) would only confuse the users.

If possible, I would suggest aiming for generating the actual topology that the user is seeing, customized so that it gives relevenat information, rather than static examples. It may be that it is not possible or the effort is too large for such a project. If the latter is the case, then using only static text is better than trying to use some but not all the available information, as Junio points out above.

Regards, Jake