Re: [PATCH] Documentation/git-merge.txt: weaken warning about uncommited changes

Matthieu Moy [off-list ref] writes:

Ramkumar Ramachandra [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

Matthieu Moy wrote:

quoted

Weaken the warning by discouraging only merge with /non-trivial/
uncommited changes.

I don't think documenting all the failure cases in the doc would be a
good idea, so I've left the "in some cases" part.

It's already documented in the pre-merge checks section, as Jonathan
pointed out [1]. 

I had missed this one. But that's not the only case, you may also have
problems with renames. The complete list would be really long to have
here, and won't bring much to the user.

True.

After having re-read the thread up to the message from Jonathan, I
suspect that a "merge" half of "pull --autosquash" series (which had
to be dropped) was based on a misunderstanding and we didn't have to
have that discussion if the documentation were a little less
discouraging about merging in a dirty working tree?

quoted

We should update the documentation to point to it: I do not think
"non-trivial" is much of an improvement.

Actually, I think it essentially says it all. If your changes are
important enough to deserve a real backup, you should stash or commit.
If you're ready to take the risk of losing it (the risk is small, but
does exist), it's OK to run "git merge" blindly.

Your documentation update makes sure that we are less discouraging,
I think.  It does not have to be the only phrasing (hinting others
to try to come up with a beeter version if they are so inclined),
but it is going in the right direction.