Re: [PATCH] git-merge: a deprecation notice of the ancient command line syntax

[Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>]

Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net> writes:

> On Mon, 30 Nov 2009, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> The ancient form of git merge command used in the original sample script
>> has been copied from Linus and are still found everywhere, I think, and
>> people may still have it in their scripts, but on the other hand, it is so
>> unintuitive that even people reasonably familiar with git is surprised by
>> accidentally triggering the support to parse this ancient form.
>> 
>> Gently nudge people to upgrade their script to more recent and readable
>> style for eventual removal of the original syntax.
>> 
>> Signed-off-by: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
>> ---
>> 
>>     And this is the first step of such a deprecation.  Perhaps we start
>>     warning in 1.7.0 and remove it in 1.8.0, or something like that.
>
> If this is going to be removed in the future, then it is already 
> deprecated.  Therefore it is much better to start warning now and not 
> wait for 1.7.0.  There is just no point delaying the advice.

Very true.

What I am not absolutely sure about is if the presense of the support for
ancient usage hurts people in real life so much that it is better to
remove it than keep it.  At least we saw one example of a user (who is not
a novice) getting puzzled by it, but that may not be enough datapoint to
decide with.