Antw: Re: [PATCH v2] merge-options.txt: correct wording of --no-commit option

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Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] schrieb am 19.02.2019 um 20:32 in

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Elijah Newren [off-list ref] writes:

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+With ‑‑no‑commit perform the merge and stop just before creating
+a merge commit, to give the user a chance to inspect and further
+tweak the merge result before committing.
++
+Note that fast‑forward updates do not need to create a merge
+commit and therefore there is no way to stop those merges with
+‑‑no‑commit.  Thus, if you want to ensure your branch is not
+changed or updated by the merge command, use ‑‑no‑ff with
+‑‑no‑commit.

While the above is an improvement (so I'll queue it on 'pu' not to
lose sight of it), I find the use of "do not need to" above somewhat
misleading.  It solicits a reaction "ok, we know it does not need
to, but it could prepare to create one to allow us to further muck
with it, no?".

IOW, a fast‑forward by definition does not create a merge by itself,
so there is nowhere to stop during a creation of a merge.  So at
least:

	s/do not need to/do not/

Agree.

It also may be a good idea to consider detecting this case and be a
bit more helpful, perhaps with end‑user experience looking like...

  $ git checkout master^0
  $ git merge ‑‑no‑commit next
  Updating 0d0ac3826a..ee538a81fe
  Fast‑forward
    ...diffstat follows here...
  hint: merge completed without creating a commit.
  hint: if you wanted to prepare for a manually tweaked merge,
  hint: do "git reset ‑‑keep ORIG_HEAD" followed by
  hint: "git merge ‑‑no‑ff ‑‑no‑commit next".

or even

  $ git checkout master^0
  $ git merge ‑‑no‑commit next
  warning: defaulting to ‑‑no‑ff, given a ‑‑no‑commit request
  Automatic merge went well; stopped before committing as requested
  hint: if you'd rather have a fast‑forward without creating a commit,
  hint: do "git reset ‑‑keep next" now.

I do not have a strong preference among three (the third option
being not doing anything), but if pressed, I'd say that the last one
might be the most user‑friendly, even though it feels a bit too
magical and trying to be smarter than its own good.

In any case, the hint for the "recovery" procedure needs to be
carefully written.

Actually I think if the user specified "--no-commit" and the merge turns out
to be fast-forward, the user could be asked whether to continue or not (instead
of undoinf afterwards); maybe when entering a response is not possible (batch
processing) the merge should be aborted due to "--no-commit" not being possible
(well actually there would never be a commit, even without that option). The
problem is that without prior inspection of the tree you cannot know whether
the merge will be fast-forward or not: fast-forward being an optimization (taht
is enabled by default) makes life more complicated here.

Regards,
Ulrich Windl