Re: [PATCH] diff: resurrect the traditional empty "diff --git" behaviour

[Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com>]

Junio C Hamano, Fri, Aug 31, 2007 22:13:42 +0200:
> The "Consier running git-status" warning message we experimented
> during the 1.5.3 cycle turns out to be a bad idea.  It robbed
> cache-dirty information from people who valued it, while still
> asking users to run "update-index --refresh".  It was hoped that
> the new behaviour would at least have some educational value,
> but not showing the cache-dirty paths like before means the user
> would not even know easily which paths are cache-dirty.
> 
> This commit reinstates the traditional behaviour as the default,
> but with a twist.
> 
> If you set diff.autorefreshindex configuration variable, it
> squelches the empty "diff --git" output, and at the end of the
> command, it automatically runs "update-index --refresh" without
> even bothering the user.  In other words, with the configuration
> variable set, people who do not care about the cache-dirtyness
> do not even have to see the warning.

I like this change.

So far my attempts to explain that warning to myself always left an
uneasy feeling of me having tricked myself into believing in its
usefullness.