Re: [PATCH v3] pull: warn if the user didn't say whether to rebase or to merge

From: Alex Henrie <alexhenrie24@gmail.com>
To: Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com>
Cc: Git Mailing List <git@vger.kernel.org>,
	Robert Dailey <rcdailey.lists@gmail.com>,
	rsbecker@nexbridge.com, Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	Konstantin Tokarev <annulen@yandex.ru>,
	Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3] pull: warn if the user didn't say whether to rebase or to merge
Date: Sat, 29 Feb 2020 20:27:56 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAMMLpeS2Fq3Nj2QjvNT6i_+ceDHW-pUqTRUhmARWen-jWQfsJg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABPp-BEewypPoDrWesk=6twgj2TMGFYdaYzdrg5p4K+mExHqeg@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 4:31 PM Elijah Newren <newren@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ick; we don't need the warning to regurgitate large sections of the
> manual, we only need to provide pointers and then they can look up the
> details in their favorite way (google, stackoverflow, looking at the
> actual manpage, etc.)  How about something more like
>
> > +               warning(_("Pulling without specifying how to reconcile divergent branches\n"
> > +                       "is discouraged. You can squelch this message by setting pull.rebase,\n"
> > +                       "or by passing any of --rebase, --no-rebase, or --ff-only\n"));

I intentionally made the message similar to the message you get when
you try to commit without setting user.name or user.email. Providing
the user with clear information on the spot is much more effective at
getting them to do the right thing than expecting them to use Google
or reread the man pages. We also want the user to understand that they
only have to set pull.rebase or pull.ff once, whereas a command-line
flag applies only to the current pull. Nevertheless, any warning
message is better than no warning at all, so I would be happy to
resubmit with your proposed text if there's consensus that a shorter
message is better.

-Alex