Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] commit: show interesting ident information in summary

From: Matthieu Moy <matthieu.moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
Date: Jan 17, 2010, 11:31 UTC
Message-ID: <vpq6371ufvi.fsf@bauges.imag.fr>
In-Reply-To: <1DDB570B-350A-40A0-B6E4-ADBDF4BE6BD2@wincent.com>

Wincent Colaiuta <win@wincent.com> writes:

Show 6 quoted lines

> I'll never see this message myself, but I think you could (and perhaps
> should) replace almost all of that with:
>
>   Your name and email address were configured automatically.
>   See "git config help" for information on setting them explicitly
>   or "git commit help" if you wish to amend this commit.

I don't think this is a good idea. The two main cases when this information will be shown is:

* Newbies, who didn't read the doc, or read it too fast. They'll
  happily ignore your short message.

  For example, I just started a project with 200 students. The doc we
  give them _starts_ with setting user/email in ~/.gitconfig, right
  before we give them the URL of the repository they'll work on. Out
  of that, 22 email adresses were mis-configured. Don't underestimate
  the ability of newbies not to read doc, even when told to do so.

  If the message is long, it'll be disturbing, and they may end up
  reading it.

* Non-newbies, using a machine for the first time. These users will
  see the message once, so it's not really disturbing, and at least I
  would appreciate the message to be flashy, to make sure I don't miss
  it.

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/