Re: [RFC] Disabling status hints in COMMIT_EDITMSG

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 10, 2013, 16:42 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqeh8wzl0h.fsf@gitster.dls.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <vpq4n9tghk5.fsf@anie.imag.fr>

Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

> Hi,
>
> I just noticed that the template COMMIT_EDITMSG was containing status
> hints, and that they were not particularty helpfull _during_ a commit. I
> think it would be sensible to ignore advice.statusHints and disable
> hints unconditionally when writting to COMMIT_EDITMSG.
>
> Any objection?

I agree that the extra "this is how you may rectify the situation" lines like these look useless at the first glance.

    # Changes to be committed:
    #   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
    #
    #       new file:   foo
    #
    # Untracked files:
    #  (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
    #
    #       bar
    #

The whole point of showing the list is to give the user a chance to notice mistakes, and after noticing a mistake, what the user does is to abort the commit, not "git reset HEAD <file>" nor "git add <file>".

But at the same time, I feel that these redundant lines, especially the latter one, would give the users a stronger cue than just saying that "bar is Untracked"; "do X to include" reminds that bar will not be included if nothing is done.

So I am on the fence on this one. No strong objection, but I suspect those who do not have any voice in this discussion (i.e. those who are about to start using Git) may be helped by keeping these lines.