Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] commit: print advice when core.commentString=auto

From: Oswald Buddenhagen <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2025 17:18:33 +0200

On Thu, Jul 31, 2025 at 04:21:55PM +0100, Phillip Wood wrote:
>An alternative
>approach would be to advise the user to run "git config --show-origin"
>and leave them to figure out how to fix it themselves but that seems
>rather unfriendly. As we're forcing them to update their config we
>should try and make that as easy as possible.
>
your approach certainly helps the user to fix their acute problem 
quickly, but
- why should it? it's not like leaving it to the user would cause them a 
   huge burden, or that a noteworthy number of users are even going to be 
   affected. i don't think the fact that the update is forced justifies 
   making it a lot more user friendly than git configuration usually is, 
   esp. at this cost in complexity.
- i don't think i'd appreciate the tool lecturing me about trivial usage 
   patterns, when the real question in that situation is why the option 
   was set like that in the first place and whether/how the replacement 
   is actually equivalent or even superior.
- given that it doesn't print the entire decision tree (when 
   encountering read-only files), it doesn't necessarily guide the user 
   towards the best overall solution. that makes it _less_ user-friendly, 
   in a way.