Re: [PATCH] send-email: do not prompt for In-Reply-To

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 28, 2020, 21:00 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqk0xio59r.fsf@gitster.c.googlers.com>
In-Reply-To: <C58UKAYKF1ZY.V5LLW3DY1KAY@homura>

"Drew DeVault" <sir@cmpwn.com> writes:

> "You can give an empty answer if you are not responding to any message"
> could confuse users, because they might think -v2 is a "response", or
> maybe they've written the patch in response to a discussion on the
> -users mailing list, or any other number of reasons.

"Type the value you would have given to --in-reply-to command line option (if you forgot to use it), or leave this field empty" perhaps? Those who do not know should be able to learn what "--in-reply-to" is. A prompt help is not the place to do a documentation.

> I hate to be a nuisance over such a seemingly simple problem, but there
> are a lot of new users who are struggling here and I care about their
> struggle. What path should we take to fixing this issue for them?

The ideal way would be to craft step (0) well enough so that new users trigger the To: prompt in the first place, which would automatically make the problem disappear ;-)