Git tedious verbosity

Git tedious verbosity

[Aleksey Midenkov]

Can you please disable all these meaningless messages which become
more and more plentiful with each new version, like:

Updated 1 path from the index

And all these repeated tips with lots of text on git push/pull which
are only first-time useful but nag people for years.

--
All the best,

Aleksey Midenkov
@midenok

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Abhishek Kumar]

Greetings Aleksey

You can look into using `--short` and `--porcelain` flags.

> Git offered enabling/disabling advice by using the 'advice.*' key in the configuration.

Read up on this StackOverflow question on "How to turn off the help
hints in git output?" [1]. These should do the trick, but feel free to
elaborate if you need something more specific.

Regards
Abhishek

[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/q/55463863

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Aleksey Midenkov]

Hi Abhishek!

Nice info, thanks. Does that disable maintenance messages like:

Updated 1 path from the index

Or gc about garbage collection? Actually bad defaults is big problem
developers undeservedly ignore. You can control everything but you
have to switch hundreds of options, because software defaults are
oriented on dumbest user. Let's overcome this bad tendency and satisfy
smartest users, not the dumbest ones. Unix was always terse system
which provided little to no output by default. Let's honor that good
tradition and not submit to "Google-Got-It" virus.



On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 12:01 AM Abhishek Kumar
<abhishekkumar8222@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Greetings Aleksey
>
> You can look into using `--short` and `--porcelain` flags.
>
> > Git offered enabling/disabling advice by using the 'advice.*' key in the configuration.
>
> Read up on this StackOverflow question on "How to turn off the help
> hints in git output?" [1]. These should do the trick, but feel free to
> elaborate if you need something more specific.
>
> Regards
> Abhishek
>
> [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/q/55463863



--
All the best,

Aleksey Midenkov
@midenok

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Andrew Clayton]

On Tue, 11 Feb 2020 17:19:53 +0300
Aleksey Midenkov <midenok@gmail.com> wrote:

> Or gc about garbage collection? Actually bad defaults is big problem
> developers undeservedly ignore. You can control everything but you
> have to switch hundreds of options, because software defaults are
> oriented on dumbest user. Let's overcome this bad tendency and satisfy
> smartest users, not the dumbest ones. Unix was always terse system
> which provided little to no output by default. Let's honor that good
> tradition and not submit to "Google-Got-It" virus.

I've been using Git for over ten years so hopefully I'm not the
*dumbest* user, but I still appreciate the various tips and hints Git
provides...

Don't really see what the problem with them is and it seems you can
quieten them if they really bother you that much...

Andrew

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Jeff King]

On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 05:19:53PM +0300, Aleksey Midenkov wrote:

> Nice info, thanks. Does that disable maintenance messages like:
> 
> Updated 1 path from the index

I don't think it does. Usually how this works is that we add new
messages which we think might be helpful, enable them by default (since
users aren't likely to find out about them if they never see them!), and
then if they turn out to be annoying or verbose, add an advice.* config
option to allow people to avoid them.

The message quoted above is a relatively new one, and I don't think it's
hit that third step yet. Patches welcome. :)

> Or gc about garbage collection? Actually bad defaults is big problem
> developers undeservedly ignore. You can control everything but you
> have to switch hundreds of options, because software defaults are
> oriented on dumbest user. Let's overcome this bad tendency and satisfy
> smartest users, not the dumbest ones. Unix was always terse system
> which provided little to no output by default. Let's honor that good
> tradition and not submit to "Google-Got-It" virus.

The goal of the process above is to find a balance between experienced
and inexperienced users. We try to be helpful to one, but provide
options for the other to customize.

-Peff

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Jeff King]

On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 02:55:49PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 05:19:53PM +0300, Aleksey Midenkov wrote:
> 
> > Nice info, thanks. Does that disable maintenance messages like:
> > 
> > Updated 1 path from the index
> 
> I don't think it does. Usually how this works is that we add new
> messages which we think might be helpful, enable them by default (since
> users aren't likely to find out about them if they never see them!), and
> then if they turn out to be annoying or verbose, add an advice.* config
> option to allow people to avoid them.
> 
> The message quoted above is a relatively new one, and I don't think it's
> hit that third step yet. Patches welcome. :)

Oh, and if you want to see the complete list, look for "advice.*" in
"git help config".

-Peff

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Sergey Organov]

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 02:55:49PM -0500, Jeff King wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Feb 11, 2020 at 05:19:53PM +0300, Aleksey Midenkov wrote:
>> 
>> > Nice info, thanks. Does that disable maintenance messages like:
>> > 
>> > Updated 1 path from the index
>> 
>> I don't think it does. Usually how this works is that we add new
>> messages which we think might be helpful, enable them by default (since
>> users aren't likely to find out about them if they never see them!), and
>> then if they turn out to be annoying or verbose, add an advice.* config
>> option to allow people to avoid them.
>> 
>> The message quoted above is a relatively new one, and I don't think it's
>> hit that third step yet. Patches welcome. :)
>
> Oh, and if you want to see the complete list, look for "advice.*" in
> "git help config".

It says:

   All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you
   do not need help by setting these to false:

If there were an option to set that default to 'false' (advice.default
maybe?), it'd have answered the demands of the experts, I think.

-- Sergey

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Junio C Hamano]

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

> It says:
>
>    All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you
>    do not need help by setting these to false:
>
> If there were an option to set that default to 'false' (advice.default
> maybe?), it'd have answered the demands of the experts, I think.
>
> -- Sergey

This was recently discussed.  A quick search in the list archive
would have found this thread, for example:

  https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqwoa122h1.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com/

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Junio C Hamano]

Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:

> It says:
>
>    All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you
>    do not need help by setting these to false:
>
> If there were an option to set that default to 'false' (advice.default
> maybe?), it'd have answered the demands of the experts, I think.

Well, just like newbies won't stay to be newbies forever (and that
is why you can disable advice.frotz once you learned about frotz),
what you call "experts" won't stay to be experts, either.  A new and
backward incompatible way to work may be introduced and a new advice
message to guide _everybody_ (including those who thought they were
already experts) may have to be introduced, and turning off all
advice.* variables, even the ones that you haven't seen, would hurt
them.

So...

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Sergey Organov]

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> It says:
>>
>>    All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you
>>    do not need help by setting these to false:
>>
>> If there were an option to set that default to 'false' (advice.default
>> maybe?), it'd have answered the demands of the experts, I think.
>
> Well, just like newbies won't stay to be newbies forever (and that
> is why you can disable advice.frotz once you learned about frotz),
> what you call "experts" won't stay to be experts, either.  A new and
> backward incompatible way to work may be introduced and a new advice
> message to guide _everybody_ (including those who thought they were
> already experts) may have to be introduced, and turning off all
> advice.* variables, even the ones that you haven't seen, would hurt
> them.

By "experts" here, in the context of particular discussion, I meant
Linux/UNIX experts who are used to tools being silent, unless verbosity
is explicitly requested (typical --verbose,-v), or at least having a
simple way to make them silent (typical --quiet,-q).

>> So...

So in fact this has little to do with git proficiency.

-- Sergey

Re: Git tedious verbosity

[Sergey Organov]

Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com> writes:

> Sergey Organov <sorganov@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> It says:
>>
>>    All advice.* variables default to true, and you can tell Git that you
>>    do not need help by setting these to false:
>>
>> If there were an option to set that default to 'false' (advice.default
>> maybe?), it'd have answered the demands of the experts, I think.
>>
>> -- Sergey
>
> This was recently discussed.  A quick search in the list archive
> would have found this thread, for example:
>
>   https://lore.kernel.org/git/xmqqwoa122h1.fsf@gitster-ct.c.googlers.com/

Thanks for pointing! Still ability to configure the default looks both
simpler and more flexible to me.

-- Sergey