Re: [PATCH v4 2/3] advice: introduce advice scoping mechanism

[Jeff King <peff@peff.net>]

On Thu, Sep 10, 2026 at 12:54:21PM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:
> 
> > I kind of wonder if _all_ advice should just say "--global". I cannot
> > think of an advice flag that is really repo specific. They are about
> > silencing extra help because the _user_ understands the situation and
> > wants Git to be less chatty.
> 
> I think there are two things in play.
> 
>  * If applicability of a piece of advice depends on the workflow
>    employed, and a user who works on multiple projects that use
>    different workflows, set of advice messages may want to be
>    squelched per project, hence "--global" may not be appropriate.
> 
>  * "I, a physical single person, understand this piece of advice" is
>    inherently per user, so squelching a piece of advice that the
>    physical single person understands globally may make sense very
>    well.
> 
> In hindsight, the latter argument should have been given more
> weight, but I think the primary thinking back when we designed the
> customizable advice messages was instead the former.

Yeah, my contention is that the first thing doesn't really exist. But I
admit I didn't carefully go through the list of advice looking for
counter-examples.

I'd be surprised if anybody really thought carefully about it, though.
When I introduced advice.* in 2009 (geez, has it really been that long?)
I had assumed people would just set it in their user config. The actual
"git config" command advice came much later, but I don't see any
discussion of global vs local in that thread:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/pull.548.git.1581311049547.gitgitgadget@gmail.com/

Amusingly that thread also touches on some of the "could we just convert
everything to advise_if_enabled()" issues we've discussed here. I had
zero recollection of it, despite participating.

-Peff