Re: [PATCH 2/2 (v3)] reset: make the output more user-friendly.

Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] writes:

Two conflicting/competing thoughts come to mind:

 1. Perhaps we should add a similar "explanation" for the list of paths
    with changes upon switching branches with "git checkout" for
    consistency.

Actually, I had never paid much attention to this message for
checkout. Just checked, and I got it wrong too ;-). I thought checkout
was showing me the files it was modifying, that wasn't it.

That said, I'm not a heavy user of local branches, so I'm a bad judge
on what should be the behavior.

 2. Such an "explanation" of what the output means would help the first
    time people, but would everybody stay "first time" forever?  Would the
    explanation become just another wasted line in valuable screen real
    estate after people gain experience?

Yes, and this is a much more general issue than just checkout/reset.
For example, the output of 'git status' is very nice to newbies:

  # On branch master
  # Changed but not updated:
  #   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
  #   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
  #
  #       modified:   git.c
  #
  no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

But out of these 8 lines, only two contain real informations, and the
(use "git bla") are just noise to expert users.

I've been thinking of a configuration option, like "core.expertuser"
or "ui.expertuser" that would let users disable these informative
messages on demand. I'm not sure how good the idea is.

--
Matthieu