Subject: Re: git status always modifies index?

From: Jeff King <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 26 Nov 2017 23:43:14 -0500

On Sun, Nov 26, 2017 at 06:35:56PM +0900, Junio C Hamano wrote:

> Having a large picture option like "--read-only" instead of ending
> up with dozens of "we implemented a knob to tweak only this little
> piece, and here is an option to trigger it" would help users in the
> long run, but we traditionally did not do so because we tend to
> avoid shipping "incomplete" features, but being perfectionist with
> such a large undertaking can stall topics with feature bloat.  In a
> case like this, however, I suspect that an aspirational feature that
> starts small, promises little and can be extended over time may be a
> good way to move forward.

I actually consider "--no-optional-locks" to be such an aspirational
feature. I didn't go digging for other cases (though I'm fairly certain
that "diff" has one), but hoped to leave it for further bug reports ("I
used the option, ran command X, and saw lock contention").

I would be fine with having a further aspirational "read only" mode. As
I said before, that's not quite the same thing as no-optional-locks, but
I think they're close enough that I'd be fine having only one of them.
But now that we've shipped a version with the locking one, we're stuck
with at least for the duration of a deprecation cycle.

-Peff