Re: [PATCH] git-status.txt: mention --no-optional-locks

From: Johannes Schindelin <Johannes.Schindelin@gmx.de>
To: Kaartic Sivaraam <kaartic.sivaraam@gmail.com>
Cc: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>, Jeff King <peff@peff.net>,
	Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>,
	Nathan Neulinger <nneul@neulinger.org>,
	Santiago Torres <santiago@nyu.edu>,
	git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] git-status.txt: mention --no-optional-locks
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2017 21:54:35 +0100 (CET)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.21.1.1711272152510.6482@virtualbox> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <b63ecdab-2283-9479-0de6-29a604c09670@gmail.com>

Hi Kaartic,

On Mon, 27 Nov 2017, Kaartic Sivaraam wrote:

> On Monday 27 November 2017 11:37 AM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> > Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> > > +using `git --no-optional-locks status` (see linkgit:git[1] for details).
> 
> It strikes me just now that `--no-side-effects` might have been a better
> name for the option (of course, iff this avoid all kinds of side
> effects. I'm not sure about the side affects other than index refreshing
> of "git status"). And in case we didn't care about the predictability of
> option names even a little, `--do-what-i-say` might have been a catchy
> alternative ;-)

Your reasoning points to an important insight: while writing index.lock
files is a side effect of `git status`, and while there may be other side
effects in other operations, it is highly doubtful that any caller would
just want to switch them off wholesale. Instead, it is much more likely
that callers will want to pick the side effect they want to switch off.

Ciao,
Dscho