RE: [RFC PATCH 01/35] merge: improve fatal fast-forward message

["Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com>]

On July 6, 2021 4:56 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@nexbridge.com> writes:
>
>>>If you do:
>>>
>>>  % git merge --ff-only
>>>  fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting.
>>>
>>>That "aborting" part is redundant; we know `git merge` should abort
>> if the fast-forward is not possible, we explicitely told git to do
>> that.
>>
>> `git merge` is a special operation where errors (conflicts, for one)
>> may leave the repository in a merge pending state where you
>> subsequently may have to use `git merge --abort` to reset the
>> situation or `git add` to continue. The `aborting` output makes it
>> clear that you do not have to do the `--abort` and *cannot* do the
>> `add` because there was an implicit `--abort` done resulting from the
>> failure. This is important information for the user.
>
>If so, adding ", aborting" to the end is misleading.  In this particular failure mode, the command pretends that the merge did not even
>start.

You know that, and I know that. I contend that git users do not generally want to care about failure modes. While a flow description might be instructive, I doubt many git users would look at it. We can only hope that front ends know how to make this clean for them.

-Randall