Re: [PATCH] branch: issue "-l" deprecation warning after pager starts

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: May 25, 2018, 01:55 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqh8mwpkgu.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <20180524193105.GB21535@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> Hmm, actually, I suppose the true value of the warning is to help people
> doing "git branch -l foo", and it would still work there. The "more
> extreme" from your suggested patch would only affect "branch -l".

> Still, I think I prefer the gentler version that we get by keeping it as
> a warning even in the latter case.

"git branch -l newbranch [forkpoint]" that warns "We won't be doing reflog creation with -l" is good, but "git branch -l" that warns "We won't be doing reflog creation with -l" sounds like a pure noise, as the user would say "Irrelevant, I am not doing that anyway--I am listing".

The warning to prepare users for the next step jk/branch-l-1-removal should say "we won't be accepting '-l' as a silent and unadvertised synonym soon. Spell it as --list" when "git branch -l" is given, I would think.

Show 8 quoted lines

> @@ -700,6 +700,11 @@ int cmd_branch(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  	if (list)
>  		setup_auto_pager("branch", 1);
>  
> +	if (used_deprecated_reflog_option) {
> +		warning("the '-l' alias for '--create-reflog' is deprecated;");
> +		warning("it will be removed in a future version of Git");
> +	}

So from that point of view, we may need a separate message to warn users who _do_ want listing with '-l' before jk/branch-l-1-removal removes it?

The jk/branch-l-2-resurrection topic later repurposes '-l' for '--list' but until that happens 'git branch -l' will error not, no?