Re: [PATCH 00/28] Use main as default branch name

From: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de>
Date: Nov 19, 2020, 09:22 UTC
Message-ID: <nycvar.QRO.7.76.6.2011191012430.56@tvgsbejvaqbjf.bet>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq1rgq4qn3.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>

Hi Junio,

On Wed, 18 Nov 2020, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de> writes:
>
> > So yes, I totally agree that triggering an interactive prompt by the empty
> > value is not really a good idea (nor a particularly intuitive behavior).
>
> Puzzled.
>
> Nobody talked about going interactive so far and I didn't suggest
> it---even though I think it is a cute idea to give a "what branch
> name do you want to use?" prompt, I do not think it is practical.

The interactive prompt was what I understood your "a notation that asks for the basename behaviour" comment. The "ask" was what tripped me up, I always interpret that as interactive. But now that I re-read it, I understand that you had not thought that far yet.

Show 11 quoted lines

> I thought it was obvious, but the key to coming up with a name
> dynamically instead of using a fixed string is to derive from a cue
> the end user gives, not directly use what the end user gives.  I do
> not think anybody in the discussion meant by "the <basename> thing"
> to literally use $(basename $(cwd)) output, but use it to derive a
> token that check-ref-format likes.  As you may have already known
> when you wrote them, "My Documents" or the root directory case are
> red herring---it would be trivial to derive "MyDocuments" or
> "my-documents" for the former, and for the latter, it is totally OK
> for the deriving rule to come up with any of "unnamed", "initial",
> etc.

The more magic you introduce, the less intuitive the whole thing gets, and the more disruptive the change.

> Most of the thing you said in the message I am responding to did not
> make much sense to me.  Perhaps you can retry after reading the
> message you are responding to again?

Could you be a bit more specific?

Was it the "I already use the empty string to force a fall-back, it cannot also mean something else" that did not make sense?

Or my comment that special-casing values that start with a colon would look saner to me?

Or the comment about the basename in a root directory?

Or referencing the SFC statement that we want to minimize disruption?

Or my stated preference to go with `main` in order to fulfill that promise of minimizing the disruption to users?

Or my current plan to introduce an `advise()` call when running `git init` that tells users that the fall-back for `init.defaultBranch` will change soon and that users are encouraged to configure it if they care about keeping the current fall-back?

Or that all of this needs to be done with care?

The message you refer to might not have been the best example of clear communication, but it hardly deserved _that_ response.

Ciao, Dscho