Subject: Re: [PATCH 4/4] git-difftool: use git-mergetool--lib for "--tool-help"

From: John Keeping <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2013 10:47:22 +0000

On Fri, Jan 25, 2013 at 01:55:03AM -0800, David Aguilar wrote:
> list_merge_tool_candidates() has a bunch of other special cases
> for $EDITOR, $DISPLAY, $GNOME-something and such so I think
> we should keep using it only for the guess_merge_tool() path.
> 
> I honestly want to remove list_merge_tool_candidates every
> time I read it, but I recognize that it does serve a purpose
> for users who have not configured anything.

Actually, I'm not sure it does.  I asked one of my colleagues whether
he used git-mergetool the other day and he said no because he couldn't
understand the OS X FileMerge tool and was happier to edit things
manually in vim.  I don't think he'd realised that he could configure a
different mergetool.

Perhaps we're trying to be too clever by guessing what the user wants
and should instead exit with a message saying:

   You have not configured a merge tool to use.  Please select one of
   the following tools and configure it using:

        git config merge.tool <tool>

    These tools are availalble on your system:
        ...

    These tools are supported but unavailable:
        ...

This may be too much of a regression for current users though.

John