RE: [RFC PATCH 01/35] merge: improve fatal fast-forward message

On July 6, 2021 4:56 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:

"Randall S. Becker" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

If you do:

 % git merge --ff-only
 fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.

That "aborting" part is redundant; we know `git merge` should abort

if the fast-forward is not possible, we explicitely told git to do
that.

`git merge` is a special operation where errors (conflicts, for one)
may leave the repository in a merge pending state where you
subsequently may have to use `git merge --abort` to reset the
situation or `git add` to continue. The `aborting` output makes it
clear that you do not have to do the `--abort` and *cannot* do the
`add` because there was an implicit `--abort` done resulting from the
failure. This is important information for the user.

If so, adding ", aborting" to the end is misleading.  In this particular failure mode, the command pretends that the merge did not even
start.

You know that, and I know that. I contend that git users do not generally want to care about failure modes. While a flow description might be instructive, I doubt many git users would look at it. We can only hope that front ends know how to make this clean for them.

-Randall