Re: [RFC PATCH 01/35] merge: improve fatal fast-forward message

> On July 6, 2021 4:56 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>>"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:
>>
>>>>If you do:
>>>>
>>>>  % git merge --ff-only
>>>>  fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.
>>>>
>>>>That "aborting" part is redundant; we know `git merge` should abort
>>> if the fast-forward is not possible, we explicitely told git to do
>>> that.
>>>
>>> `git merge` is a special operation where errors (conflicts, for one)
>>> may leave the repository in a merge pending state where you
>>> subsequently may have to use `git merge --abort` to reset the
>>> situation or `git add` to continue. The `aborting` output makes it
>>> clear that you do not have to do the `--abort` and *cannot* do the
>>> `add` because there was an implicit `--abort` done resulting from the
>>> failure. This is important information for the user.
>>
>>If so, adding ", aborting" to the end is misleading.  In this particular failure mode, the command pretends that the merge did not even
>>start.
>
> You know that, and I know that. I contend that git users do not
> generally want to care about failure modes. While a flow
> description might be instructive, I doubt many git users would
> look at it. We can only hope that front ends know how to make this
> clean for them.