Re: [PATCH] clean: Use past tense for msg_remove, msg_skip_git_dir, and msg_skip_cwd

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022 at 6:42 PM Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@gmail.com> wrote:

This strikes me as an unnecessary or at least insufficiently motivated patch. The difference between "Removing <path>" and "Removed <path>" is lost in the noise when there is no user-input or other behavior slowing these down, and they are removed at the speed the machine can remove. The only time the user will be able to tell the difference is if they are using strace or a debugger, and I really don't like the idea of changing the UI and making translators do more work just for those users. Besides, we could just print the messages earlier.

A bigger question to me, is what tense do other commands in git use? If one command prints:

   Removed <path>

but another prints

   Patching <path>

then that's a minor inconsistency that users may actually notice. I have no idea what tense git tends to use for all its different commands, but before changing some strings and incurring more work for translators, I'd think we'd want to make sure we are at least increasing consistency in this area rather than decreasing it.

Anyway, it may not be a big deal, but that's just my random thoughts on the patch.