Re: [PATCH v4] merge: new autosetupmerge option 'simple' for matching branches

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
To: Tao Klerks <tao@klerks.biz>
Cc: "Josh Steadmon" <steadmon@google.com>,
	"Tao Klerks via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, "Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>,
	"Eric Sunshine" <sunshine@sunshineco.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4] merge: new autosetupmerge option 'simple' for matching branches
Date: Wed, 20 Apr 2022 10:43:24 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <xmqqczhbr6pv.fsf@gitster.g> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAPMMpogY5vZU8gyRSYh+BM4goPPtJw0cCiM-31sy-s_uGRv8uA@mail.gmail.com> (Tao Klerks's message of "Wed, 20 Apr 2022 07:12:06 +0200")

Tao Klerks <tao@klerks.biz> writes:

>> However, I
>> wonder how users for whom this may be useful are going to discover this
>> option? I don't expect that such users are going to be watching Git's
>> release notes looking for new features such as this, or carefully
>> reading documentation changes.
>
> Honestly, I was being a bit selfish here - I effectively control the
> gitconfig of "my" users, so I was planning on enabling this by default
> and letting it "settle in" in git at large, eventually proposing to
> change the default.

I am afraid that it is double disservice to your users.  Once they
graduate your organization, they notice that their Git does not work
as they expect and puzzled.

> ...
> To choose either option permanently, see push.default in 'git help config'.
> ---
>
> I would propose to add one sentence at the end along the lines of:
> ---
> To instead avoid automatically configuring upstream branches when
> their name doesn't match the local branch, see option 'simple' of
> branch.autosetupmerge in 'git help config'.
> ---
>
> Does that make sense to you?

Two questions.

 - If a user follows the push.default advice, does it have any
   advantage to set branch.autosetupmerge=simple at all?

 - If a user follows the branch.autosetupmerge=simple advice, what
   happens their "git push" on a branch that the .merge is not set
   due to this configuration?  Shouldn't they have to set up the
   push.default for these branches anyway?

While it might be a good thing to mention branch.autosetupmerge
configuration variable, I am not sure if "To instead avoid" is a
good thing to say here.  It sounds as if the user can ignore
push.default as long as branch.autosetupmerge is taken care of, but
I suspect that is not the case.  Setting the latter to 'simple'
means there are *MORE* branches that do not have .remote/.merge set
up, doesn't it?  Which in turn means that we are relying more on
what push.default is set to, right?