From: Daniel Beck <daniel@ddbeck•com>
To: Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks•im>
Cc: "Junio C Hamano" <gitster@pobox•com>,
"Daniel D. Beck via GitGitGadget" <gitgitgadget@gmail•com>,
git@vger•kernel.org, "Jean-Noël Avila" <jn.avila@free•fr>,
"Johannes Schindelin" <johannes.schindelin@gmx•de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] doc: fetch: document `--jobs=0` behavior
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:47:44 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <FDB97002-401E-4F36-95AA-7FB772F9301F@ddbeck.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <aZggm7R-4VohiCYm@pks.im>
> On 20 Feb 2026, at 09:51, Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks•im> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 10:59:10AM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>> Patrick Steinhardt <ps@pks•im> writes:
>>
>>> On Wed, Feb 18, 2026 at 07:32:39PM +0000, Daniel D. Beck via GitGitGadget wrote:
>>>> diff --git a/Documentation/fetch-options.adoc b/Documentation/fetch-options.adoc
>>>> index fcba46ee9e..e15cbc51f2 100644
>>>> --- a/Documentation/fetch-options.adoc
>>>> +++ b/Documentation/fetch-options.adoc
>>>> @@ -234,6 +234,8 @@ endif::git-pull[]
>>>> `--jobs=<n>`::
>>>> Parallelize all forms of fetching up to _<n>_ jobs at a time.
>>>> +
>>>> +A value of 0 will use some reasonable default.
>>>
>>> Can't we do better though than saying "some reasonable default"? As a
>>> user I would wonder what this is even supposed to mean. True, we don't
>>> do so either in the documentation of "fetch.parallel". But arguably, we
>>> should update both sites to reflect the status quo.
>>>
>>> Going into the code we seem to fall back to `online_cpus()`. So should
>>> we document this accordingly?
>>
>> I do not have time to dig this out myself from ancient discussion
>> threads, but we probably had the same discussion when "git config
>> --help" described the fetch.parallel with exactly the same phrasing
>> and decided to leave the exact implementation detail out of the
>> end-user facing documentation.
>
> Doesn't look like it. The thread in question is [1], and neither the
> commit message nor the discussion around the patch mentioned why we
> don't document what the reasonable default is.
(This is my first reply to this mailing list. Apologies in advance for any
formatting mistakes.)
To set aside the history for a moment, I submitted this patch because, as a
Git user, I was looking for someone to just tell me a reasonable number of
jobs to use. I was pleased to find that Git already had a "don't make me
think" value built in.
If there's a possibility to giving this behavior a name like `--jobs=auto`
[1], then I'd recommend against specifically promising a strategy in the
docs. It would preserve that "don't make me think" quality. Plus it would
leave the door open to changing that strategy, if a better method came
along.
That said, if the strategy is meant to be meaningful to users, then I'd
suggest naming it something like `--jobs=cpus` at the same time as
describing the workings of `online_cpus()`.
In any case, thanks for the thoughtful consideration of my patch.
Daniel
[1]: <xmqq342w7hx2.fsf@gitster•g>
>
> Dscho, do you remember by chance why you decided to not be more specific
> here?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Patrick
>
> [1]: <pull.369.git.gitgitgadget@gmail•com>
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-02-24 9:47 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-02-18 19:32 [PATCH] doc: fetch: document `--jobs=0` behavior Daniel D. Beck via GitGitGadget
2026-02-19 11:39 ` Patrick Steinhardt
2026-02-19 18:59 ` Junio C Hamano
2026-02-20 8:51 ` Patrick Steinhardt
2026-02-24 9:47 ` Daniel Beck [this message]
2026-03-02 12:35 ` Johannes Schindelin
2026-03-02 19:33 ` Junio C Hamano
2026-02-19 17:38 ` Junio C Hamano
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