Re: [PATCH] submodule merge: update conflict error message

From: Glen Choo <chooglen@google.com>
Date: Jun 8, 2022, 17:34 UTC
Message-ID: <kl6l8rq76oub.fsf@chooglen-macbookpro.roam.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAFySSZC0ieObo=CzhoHiqrcdv3335VaRBtYMLFe9oEJ0hucOCA@mail.gmail.com>

Calvin Wan <calvinwan@google.com> writes:

Show 10 quoted lines

>> Hmph.  Is 1. necessary?
>
> I just tested it and it is not, so I do agree recommending to abort the
> merge is unnecessary/bad advice. How does this sound?
>
> Failed to merge submodule <submodule>
> CONFLICT (submodule): Merge conflict in <submodule>
> Automatic merge failed; recursive merging with submodules is currently
> not supported. To manually merge, merge conflicted submodules first
> before merging the superproject.

This message sounds ok to me, since this is probably what the user wants 90% of the time. Since we don't abort the merge, this just a 'regular' merge conflict resolution (albeit with submodules). The user probably wants to merge the submodules, but they can choose however they want to resolve the merge conflict, e.g. maybe they'd prefer to just pick one side (or even more exotically, a different commit altogether.)

An improvement for that other 10% would be to print this help message with the advice() API so that users can turn it off if they don't find it helpful. Or maybe it's confusing to some new users who use a different merging workflow and so an admin might turn off this advice for them.