Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] launch_editor(): indicate that Git waits for user input

From: Lars Schneider <larsxschneider@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 3, 2017, 12:47 UTC
Message-ID: <D3A5C7E6-A63C-431C-97B5-070632EE3540@gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqvahojssu.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>

Show 19 quoted lines

> On 03 Dec 2017, at 06:15, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> wrote:
> 
> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
>> I tried to think of ways this "show a message and then delete it" could
>> go wrong. It should work OK with editors that just do curses-like
>> things, taking over the terminal and then restoring it at the end.
>> ...
> 
> I think that it is not worth to special-case "dumb" terminals like
> this round of the patches do.  If it so much disturbs reviewers that
> "\e[K" may not work everywhere, we can do without the "then delete
> it" part.  It was merely trying to be extra nice, and the more
> important part of the "feature" is to be noticeable, and I do think
> that not showing anything on "dumb", only because the message cannot
> be retracted, is putting the cart before the horse.  
> 
> Since especially now people are hiding this behind an advise.*
> thing, I think it is OK to show a message and waste a line, even.

Well, my reasoning was to minimize the risk of bothering people: People using "dumb" terminals wouldn't be bothered because nothing changes and people using "smart" terminals would see the message only temporarily. Of course, emacsclient users would be the exception. They would always be bothered and therefore I added the "advice" switch.

That being said, I can also follow your logic. If we have such a feature then we shouldn't surprise the user. We should make it consistently available in all environments.

I am on the fence here. I like consistency but I don't want to bother Git users.

@Peff: Do you lean into either direction? Could you imagine that novice/regular users are bothered? (I don't expect experts to be bothered too much as they would likely be able to find and set the advice config).

Thanks, Lars