Subject: Re: [PATCH/ALMOST FINAL] Contextually notify user about an initial commit

From: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 2017 10:34:59 +0200

On Sun, Jun 18 2017, Kaartic Sivaraam jotted:

> "git status" indicated "Initial commit" when HEAD points at
> an unborn branch.  This message is shared with the commit
> log template "git commit" prepares for the user when
> creating a commit (i.e. "You are about to create the initial
> commit"), and is OK as long as the reader is aware of the
> nature of the message (i.e. it guides the user working
> toward the next commit), but was confusing to new users,
> especially the ones who do "git commit -m message" without
> having a chance to pay attention to the commit log template.
>
> The "Initial commit" indication wasn't an issue in the commit
> template. Taking that into consideration, a good solution would
> be to contextually use different messages to indicate the user
> that there were no commits in this branch.
>
> A few alternatives considered were,
>
> * Waiting for initial commit
> * Your current branch does not have any commits
> * Current branch waiting for initial commit
>
> Patch-by: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
> Signed-off-by: Kaartic Sivaraam <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  builtin/commit.c | 1 +
>  wt-status.c      | 5 ++++-
>  wt-status.h      | 1 +
>  3 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/builtin/commit.c b/builtin/commit.c
> index 1d805f5da..0f36d2ac3 100644
> --- a/builtin/commit.c
> +++ b/builtin/commit.c
> @@ -1648,6 +1648,7 @@ int cmd_commit(int argc, const char **argv, const char *prefix)
>  		usage_with_options(builtin_commit_usage, builtin_commit_options);
>
>  	status_init_config(&s, git_commit_config);
> +	s.commit_template = 1;
>  	status_format = STATUS_FORMAT_NONE; /* Ignore status.short */
>  	s.colopts = 0;
>
> diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
> index 037548496..34aa1af66 100644
> --- a/wt-status.c
> +++ b/wt-status.c
> @@ -1576,7 +1576,10 @@ static void wt_longstatus_print(struct wt_status *s)
>
>  	if (s->is_initial) {
>  		status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s), "%s", "");
> -		status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s), _("Initial commit"));
> +		status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s),
> +				 s->commit_template
> +				 ? _("Initial commit")
> +				 : _("No commits yet on the branch"));

Why not simply "No commits yet", saying "on the branch" is needlessy
duplicating information in the context of the status output in which
this is printed, i.e. now you have:

    $ ~/g/git/git-status
    On branch master

    No commits yet on the branch

    nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

But we can just more succinctly say:

    $ ~/g/git/git-status
    On branch master

    No commits yet

    nothing to commit (create/copy files and use "git add" to track)

Since we've already pointed out that the user is on a branch.

Also, if something is worth fixing it's worth testing for, so you can
fix this test into the patch:

diff --git a/t/t7508-status.sh b/t/t7508-status.sh
index 79427840a4..b9532d201d 100755
--- a/t/t7508-status.sh
+++ b/t/t7508-status.sh
@@ -1608,4 +1608,15 @@ test_expect_success 'git commit -m will commit a staged but ignored submodule' '
        git config -f .gitmodules  --remove-section submodule.subname
 '
 
+test_expect_success 'No commits yet should be noted in status output' '
+       git init initial &&
+       cd initial &&
+       git status >output &&
+       test_i18ngrep "No commits yet" output &&
+       test_commit initial &&
+       git status >output &&
+       test_i18ngrep ! "No commits yet" output &&
+       test_i18ngrep "nothing.*to commit" output
+'
+
 test_done
diff --git a/wt-status.c b/wt-status.c
index 7991fd1098..f324ea20a6 100644
--- a/wt-status.c
+++ b/wt-status.c
@@ -1582,7 +1582,7 @@ static void wt_longstatus_print(struct wt_status *s)
                status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s),
                                 s->commit_template
                                 ? _("Initial commit")
-                                : _("No commits yet on the branch"));
+                                : _("No commits yet"));
                status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s), "%s", "");
        }

>  		status_printf_ln(s, color(WT_STATUS_HEADER, s), "%s", "");
>  	}
>
> diff --git a/wt-status.h b/wt-status.h
> index 6018c627b..782b2997f 100644
> --- a/wt-status.h
> +++ b/wt-status.h
> @@ -76,6 +76,7 @@ struct wt_status {
>  	char color_palette[WT_STATUS_MAXSLOT][COLOR_MAXLEN];
>  	unsigned colopts;
>  	int null_termination;
> +	int commit_template;
>  	int show_branch;
>  	int hints;