Re: [PATCH v2] status: long status advice adapted to recent capabilities

From: Rudy Rigot <rudy.rigot@gmail.com>
Date: Nov 3, 2022, 14:28 UTC
Message-ID: <CANaDLWK6-KkfKP0mipuWccfQFacDWsLHFNjS7ogL_xWvvmrCfQ@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <Y2MEXyhh2cJ14ba9@nand.local>

> looking up an unknown configuration variable with 'man
> git-config' is easy enough.

I'm not strongly opinionated, but I believe the initial idea behind redirecting them to the doc was because Git now comes with more configuration abilities to improve performance of git status, that may be more or less relevant depending on use cases, so there isn't really a single git-config key for them to look up any more. Their ideal solution could be core.untrackedCache=true, core.fsmonitor=true, advice.statusUoption=false, status.showUntrackedFiles=false, or even some combinations of those can be relevant.

From there, the goal I believe we were going for with this new doc section is to let users know what configs exist for their git status slowness pains and why, so they can then go look those configs up for more details, which I agree would indeed be easy from there.

Again, I'm not strongly opinionated, and I hope I accurately represented the inital thinking on this idea.

One slightly stronger opinion I have, is that if the advice message was just

> It took %.2f seconds to enumerate untracked files.

and nothing else, I can definitely see a strong UX downside of not giving a hint of next steps for users. Basically, "you have a problem, and we're not helping you resolve it". Were you thinking more of something like this?

> It took %.2f seconds to enumerate untracked files.
> Please look up the core.untrackedCache, core.fsmonitor
> advice.statusUoption, and status.showUntrackedFiles configs
> for potential solutions.

I'd say that's probably somewhat cryptic and a bit verbose (which is what we were trying to avoid by telling them to go see the doc), but we wouldn't be leaving the user stranded, so I can see how that would work out ok.

I'm very interested in what you think.

Thanks,