Re: [RFC variant 2 of 2] "needs update" considered harmful

On Sun, Jul 20, 2008 at 12:48:21AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

"git update-index --refresh", "git reset" and "git add --refresh" have
reported paths that have local modifications as "needs update" since the
beginning of git.

Although this is logically correct in that you need to update the index at
that path before you can commit that change, it is now becoming more and
more clear, especially with the continuous push for user friendliness
since 1.5.0 series, that the message is suboptimal.  After all, the change
may be something the user might want to get rid of, and "updating" would
be absolutely a wrong thing to do if that is the case.

I prepared two alternatives to solve this.  Both aim to reword the message
to more neutral "locally modified".

This patch is a more straightforward variant that changes the message not
only for Porcelain commands ("add" and "reset") but also changes the
output from the plumbing command "update-index".

Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <redacted>

I believe this is a good thing. Scripts need to be modified for the
reorganization anyway, and I'm not sure if there are any actually
depening on this particular string. I think having inconsistent error
messaging is worse in long term.

FWIW, looking at Cogito,

	cg-Xlib: git-update-index --refresh | sed 's/needs update$/locally modified/'

is the only reference to this. ;-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
As in certain cults it is possible to kill a process if you know
its true name.  -- Ken Thompson and Dennis M. Ritchie