Re: [RFC/PATCH 0/9] commit: more focused advice in the no-changes-staged case

["Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason" <avarab@gmail.com>]

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 00:54, Jonathan Nieder <jrnieder@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> When last seen[1], this series was a single patch in very rough form,
> but there have been almost no functional changes since then.
>
> The patches suppress most output when “git commit” is run without
> stages changed.  So instead of
>
>        $ git commit
>        # On branch master
>        # Changed but not updated:
>        #   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
>        #   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
>        #
>        #       modified:   dir1/modified
>        #
>        # Untracked files:
>        #   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
>        #
>        #       actual
>        #       dir1/untracked
>        #       dir2/modified
>        #       dir2/untracked
>        #       expect
>        #       output
>        #       untracked
>        no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
>
> which may cause a newcomer to panic, you get
>
>        $ git commit
>        no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
>
> which would just cause her to scratch her head or say “oh, right!”
> instead.  Hopefully these patches will at least provide a reminder to
> improve the various "no changes" advice messages.
>
> Ideas for future work:
>
>  - add some tests
>  - give the full traditional output if -a or any paths were passed on
>   the command line.
>
> Most of the patches are code clarity improvements which is not
> strictly related to this topic.
>
> Patch 6 cleans up the most obvious script to add tests for this in,
> though I have not added any tests to it.
>
> Patch 8 changes commit --dry-run output in a more modest way, to
> print the same advice Jeff added to commit proper last month.  I
> suspect this is a good change, but input from people who script
> around commit --dry-run would be welcome.
>
> Patch 9 is the advertised patch.  It should be self-explanatory.
>
> Thoughts?

Firstly. Acked-by on patches 1-8, they're some much needed
cleanup. Especially fixing the hairy wt-status.c code and the test
fixes.

I'm not so sure about 9/9. Every time I make this mistake with "git
commit" I find it helpful to be able to just look up to see what I
need to stage. But perhaps the wall of text can be confusing to
newbies, I don't have a strong opinion on whether it should be
included or not.

As an aside, isn't this sort of thing (i.e. long notices/help
messages) usually hidden behind advice.* nowadays?

With the stripped down message nothing tells you how to find out what
to add, which the old message did just by including the "git status"
output.

Anyway, meh, I don't know :)