Re: use core.fsmonitor instead

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Apr 26, 2022, 23:40 UTC
Message-ID: <xmqqtuafo1ko.fsf@gitster.g>
In-Reply-To: <CAMTWFOGU1ojFLE0v6cyyOh3tRRNmT8Nc9aWW=RLS4aHwJ5QDmw@mail.gmail.com>

David Calkins <david.s.calkins@gmail.com> writes:

Show 16 quoted lines

> I installed Git v2.36.0 for Windows (64-bit) and when running commands
> I get the following output.
>
> hint: core.useBuiltinFSMonitor will be deprecated soon; use
> core.fsmonitor instead
> hint: Disable this message with "git config advice.useCoreFSMonitorConfig false"
>
> I opened the system Git config file and updated it to have the below.
>
>  useBuiltinFSMonitor = false
>
> After this change I no longer get that output.  However, the hint
> indicated that I should "use core.fsmonitor instead".  Is there
> something else I should be doing besides just telling it not to
> useBuildtinFSMonitor?  How do I tell it to "use core.fsmonitor
> instead"?

I do not do Windows, and I believe this is one area their codebase deviates from what I have in my tree (read: Git for Windows is a bit ahead of the real Git), so I have to speak with some speculation, but the above does look a poor end-user experience. If the code detected core.useBuildtinFSMonitor is set to true, it should have suggested to set core.fsmonitor to true instead, not just leaving at "use X instead" without telling how to use X.

I am speculating that the old way (on Windows) to use the built-in fsmonitor code was

    git config core.useBuiltinFSMonitor true

(this is something existed only in Git for Windows). But the latest incantation to ask for the built-in fsmonitor is to say

    git config core.fsmonitor true

on platforms that support builtin fsmonitor. I think that is what the message is trying to tell you.

It looks also like a very poor design to give hint tied to an advice variable in this case. They used to use core.usebuiltinfsmonitor and they are trying to migrate their users away to use core.fsmonitor variable instead, so they could just have tied the advice messages to core.fsmonitor variable. If they see that core.usebuiltinfsmonitor is still used, and if they see core.fsmonitor also is set (even to 'false'), then they know the user has migrated, so they can stay quiet without forcing the user to set advice.* configuration variable. If they do not see core.fsmonitor set to anything but core.usebuiltinfsmonitor used, then they can complain. There shouldn't be a need to use the advice.usecorefsmonitorconfig variable at all, as far as I see, and that makes this end-user experience doubly bad.