Re: Re* [PATCH] "not uptodate" changed to "has local changes"

On Sat, May 17, 2008 at 9:03 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Don't feed the troll by responding to a cheap shot.

Yes, a cheap shot, but I think one trying to make a point.

The plumbing output is sacred as it is an API.  We _could_ change it if it
is broken in such a way that it cannot convey necessary information fully,
but we just do not _reword_ for the sake of rewording.  If somebody does
not like it, s/he is complaining too late.  S/he should have been here in
early May 2005 and make the language used by the API closer to what humans
read.  S/he wasn't here.  Too bad, and it is too late.

Mhh.. I guess I didn't realize how strongly git still is "many
commands that are good at what they do" that together form a coherent
entity.

If you do not see something wrong with this output, your brain has already
been rotten with use of git for too long a time.  Nobody asked us to
"merge" but why are we talking about "Cannot merge"?

Very good point, perhaps we should consider double-checking them all
and improving them for one of the next 1.x releases.

Try a different approach along this patch instead.

   $ git-checkout pu
   error: You have local changes to 'Makefile'; cannot switch branches.

There are other places that ask unpack_trees() to n-way merge, detect
issues _and_ let it issue error message on its own, which people who
complained in this thread can identify and improve, but I did this as a
demonstration and replaced only one message.

The patch looks like a step in the right direction, but if there is
interest in improving the error messaging system why not do it right
and make it generic. Instead of each file reinventing the wheel create
a more generic system that uses a configuration file (I think this was
suggested earlier). If we choose something like that, perhaps it would
be nice to add a 'scripting' mode, which provides with a CLI-like
messages instead of the usual human-readable ones (and thus less easy
to parse).

<snip patch>

-- 
Cheers,

Sverre Rabbelier