Re: [PATCH] diff: resurrect the traditional empty "diff --git" behaviour

Junio C Hamano, Fri, Aug 31, 2007 22:13:42 +0200:

The "Consier running git-status" warning message we experimented
during the 1.5.3 cycle turns out to be a bad idea.  It robbed
cache-dirty information from people who valued it, while still
asking users to run "update-index --refresh".  It was hoped that
the new behaviour would at least have some educational value,
but not showing the cache-dirty paths like before means the user
would not even know easily which paths are cache-dirty.

This commit reinstates the traditional behaviour as the default,
but with a twist.

If you set diff.autorefreshindex configuration variable, it
squelches the empty "diff --git" output, and at the end of the
command, it automatically runs "update-index --refresh" without
even bothering the user.  In other words, with the configuration
variable set, people who do not care about the cache-dirtyness
do not even have to see the warning.

I like this change.

So far my attempts to explain that warning to myself always left an
uneasy feeling of me having tricked myself into believing in its
usefullness.