Re: [PATCH 0/3] Reject non-ff pulls by default

From: Matthieu Moy <Matthieu.Moy@grenoble-inp.fr>
To: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Cc: "brian m. carlson" <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>,
	Jeff King <peff@peff.net>, John Keeping <john@keeping.me.uk>,
	Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>,
	git@vger.kernel.org, Andreas Krey <a.krey@gmx.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/3] Reject non-ff pulls by default
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 10:26:00 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <vpq4n9tjd5z.fsf@anie.imag.fr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s0YaQo7xAkPcV3xVTcYQStUVuyY=we-=KMgtZ-xgZzz1Q@mail.gmail.com> (Felipe Contreras's message of "Mon, 9 Sep 2013 18:17:07 -0500")

Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com> writes:

> The problem is the newcomers, and the newcomers will most definitely
> not activate a configuration option to tell them that they are doing
> something potentially undesirable.

I teach Git to 200 newcommers each year. All of them run "git pull" the
first day, but believe me, very few of them want to know what a rebase
is at that time.

(I also work with experienced computer scientists, and actually, very
few of them want to know what a rebase is either :-( )

> By the time they learn about pull.mode, they probably already know
> what a rebase is. So what is the point of the configuration in the
> first place?
[...]
> That doesn't mean anything, you are assuming the user will do 'git
> pull --rebase', and there's no rationale as to why they would end up
> doing that.

So, you insist in asking the user to chose between rebase and merge, but
you also insist that they will not chose rebase? So, why ask?

> 'git commit' by default "prevents" users from creating commits without
> first adding changes to the staging area, and since it's a concept
> unique to Git, it's fair to say that none of the newcomers understand
> why 'git commit' is failing, the error messages is not particularly
> useful either.

I don't particularly agree that not defaulting to --all was a good idea,
but that's another topic.

But the error message is rather clear:

  no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

-- 
Matthieu Moy
http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/