Re: Friendly refspecs (Was: Re: git annoyances)

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

[Your message didn't go to the list, but I think it was supposed to, so
I am re-adding the list].

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 01:16:57AM +0200, Sverre Rabbelier wrote:

> >  I wonder if people like Linus who do a lot of one-off pulls would find
> >  that too cluttery. I guess we can post a patch and see. ;)
> 
> Maybe a 'newbie' configuration option could be added?
> We can then, if that option is set, provide this kind of information
> to the user.
> Then, later on, when the user is more confident, they can unset the option.
> I reckon it should be set to default-off but that we should provide an
> easy way to turn it on.
> (That is, 'git config newbie on', is easy enough, as long as it is
> mentioned in a/the newbie guide)

This has been discussed before, and I think the general consensus was
that it's a bad idea to separate the "newbie" and "expert" experience
too much. It makes it harder to provide advice and documentation that
works for everyone.

Now that argument generally applies to _behavior_ changes, not verbosity
of messages. But in this case, I think it is easy enough to find a
"right" behavior for everyone: show the message on fetch, which would
otherwise be a very confusing command, but suppress it on "pull", where
the fetching is mostly a side effect.

-Peff