Re: [PATCH] git-merge: a deprecation notice of the ancient command line syntax

Nicolas Pitre [off-list ref] writes:

On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:

quoted

The ancient form of git merge command used in the original sample script
has been copied from Linus and are still found everywhere, I think, and
people may still have it in their scripts, but on the other hand, it is so
unintuitive that even people reasonably familiar with git is surprised by
accidentally triggering the support to parse this ancient form.

Gently nudge people to upgrade their script to more recent and readable
style for eventual removal of the original syntax.

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

    And this is the first step of such a deprecation.  Perhaps we start
    warning in 1.7.0 and remove it in 1.8.0, or something like that.

If this is going to be removed in the future, then it is already 
deprecated.  Therefore it is much better to start warning now and not 
wait for 1.7.0.  There is just no point delaying the advice.

Very true.

What I am not absolutely sure about is if the presense of the support for
ancient usage hurts people in real life so much that it is better to
remove it than keep it.  At least we saw one example of a user (who is not
a novice) getting puzzled by it, but that may not be enough datapoint to
decide with.