Re: Changing the defaults for send-email / suppress-cc ?

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 7:21 PM, Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

Paul Gortmaker [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

In light of this, I've simply advised new users to run something like:

git config --global sendemail.suppresscc all

...just so that they won't accidentally do what I've described in the above.

quoted

Apologies if this has been discussed before; I took a quick scan of my
archive and didn't see any discussions on it.

I think I've seen discussions in the distant past but not very recently.
IIRC some people had exactly the same reaction as you did, and were loud,
while others were happy with the default, but weren't as loud.

But loudness depends on how annoyed they are, and unhappy people are
louder than others, so we cannot judge much from the loudness alone.

Thanks for the reply -- I'm not interested in being "loud"  ;-)   But
I think I'm in an interesting situation where I see people who are not
necessarily wanting to use git, but are required to use git in order
to do their daily activities.  So they approach it with some
apprehension and, given what human nature is, are looking for reasons
to justify that apprehension.

quoted

With the recent thread
about warning people of non-back compatible changes that will appear
post 1.6.2 -- I thought perhaps this was a good time to
mention/consider it.

Unless you are a single project person, or have groups of hosts that share
the home directory that is dedicated for working only on a single project,
using $HOME/.gitconfig for this is a bad advice to give in general; as I
think this really depends on what you are working on.

Yes, well it is the right solution for the new users I'm working with,
since I know what their focus is, but that wasn't really where I
wanted the discussion to focus.

My point was that I've seen these new users get scared off by having
git send-email essentially embarrass them, and that it would be a
shame to have people in general get the wrong impression about git
from this one small setting, when it is such a useful tool.  Really,
it does tend to violate the principle of least surprise for the new
user.  If there is a new user who is a bit apprehensive about git, the
defaults for "suppress-cc" can give them all the evidence they need to
justify their fear of it, and then the FUD starts.   So, I think this
is a case where "do nothing, unless explicitly asked" is perhaps the
wise choice.  That was the only thing I wanted to draw attention to.

Thanks,
Paul.