Re: "Your branch is up-to-date ..." is incorrect English grammar

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Aug 21, 2017, 22:37 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqmv6s5yzn.fsf@gitster.mtv.corp.google.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAN0heSrh_+J=LQnGZtngxQbcHAjFhX9vPKKDa7_ORz4iDpXf=g@mail.gmail.com>

Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com> writes:

Show 15 quoted lines

>> But “your branch is up-to-date” is INCORRECT. And, because it’s
>> incorrect, it conveys an odd and unsettling experience to native
>> English speakers whenever they read it.
>>
>> If you’re curious, you can find plenty of discussion of this point of
>> grammar. Here’s just one example:
>> https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/180611/do-i-keep-myself-up-to-date-or-up-to-date-on-something.
>
> There is also some previous discussion on this very list:
> https://public-inbox.org/git/CALFtnmeRxgetuCVbO8ZmVkCR302vQ2s4hTPoHxAe5NEfmjtXEg@mail.gmail.com/T/#u
>
> The code base contains a few instances of "up-to-date" and "up to date".
> A tree wide sweep could be made to update user-visible strings in the
> code and in the documentation. Fixing source code comments seems like
> overkill.

It should be safe to update any message that is meant for human consumption (i.e. those inside the _("... message ...")) i18n marker). As the use of "up-to-date" dates back to the days when Linus was still doing much code for our project, I suspect there may be some plumbing message that contains the phrase that scripts expect to stay spelled that way, and it is not OK to "fix" them.

Thanks.