Re: amend warnings with no changes staged

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 6, 2019, 03:53 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh86vkl0j.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <xmqqpnljkm3d.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

Show 21 quoted lines

> Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> writes:
>
>>>> Some non-judgemental descriptive output like
>>>>
>>>> 	$ git commit --amend --no-edit
>>>> 	No changes.
>>>> 	$
>>>>
>>>> would address this case, without bothering people who are doing it
>>>> intentionally.  So I think there's room for a simple improvement here.
>>>
>>> I do that to refresh the committer timestamp.
>>
>> I do, too.  The proposal is, paraphrasing,
>>
>> 	$ git commit --amend --no-edit
>> 	Ah, I see that you want me to refresh the committer timestamp.
>> 	Done, as requested.
>> 	$
>
> Ah, OK then.  I somehow misread "No changes." as an error message.

Well, on second thought, I think "fatal: no changes" that exits with non-zero, with "--force" as an escape hatch for those who want to refresh the committer timestamp, would probably be more in line with the expectation Lukas had when this thread was started, and I further suspect that it might be a bit more end-user friendly.

It is a backward incompatible behaviour, but I suspect that if I were inventing "commit --amend" today, unlike 8588452c ("git-commit --amend: allow empty commit.", 2006-03-04), I probably would design it that way. After all, failing and stopping is always a safer option than going ahead with or without a report.

I am not sure which one between "go ahead anyway but report" and "fail by default but allow forcing" I would prefer more. At least not yet. But I won't rule the latter out at this point.

Thanks.