From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: path/to/some/file: needs update
Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 12:52:51 -0600
Message-ID: <20101203185250.GA14049@burratino>
References: <AANLkTinsUZCUJamUHWN=H7tyL5nKACmEcyvG6hpsTDtv@mail.gmail.com>
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To: Patrick Doyle <wpdster@gmail.com>
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Hi,

Patrick Doyle wrote:

> Needless to say, I was able to calm them down.  But it occurred to me
> that "needs update" isn't necessarily the most helpful message and
> that "error: ... Cannot merge" could offer a little more explanation.
>
> I'm happy to submit the trivial patch changing "needs update" to
> "locally modified".  I suspect there might be some ramifications in
> terms of scripts that expect the old message to be there
[...]
> What do folks think?

I think you are quite right, on both counts.

See v1.6.0-rc0~4 ("needs update" considered harmful, 2008-07-20) and
v1.5.6-rc0~7^2 (unpack-trees: allow Porcelain to give different error
messages, 2008-05-17) for inspiration.  Do you remember which
porcelain command was making trouble in this example?