[PATCH] merge: give clearer error messages when there is nothing to merge

[Matt Mackall]

On Thu, 2010-06-17 at 15:20 +0000, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> > I admire the conciseness of Mercurial's output, but sometimes it goes
> > a little far in trimming the fat.  Ordinary people don't communicate
> > in telegraph English because a lot of meaning gets dropped when you
> > cut the language down so drastically.
> 
> I agree completely. It is not like the user is being charged a dollar
> per word to see these messages. The age of the telegraph is long gone.

User attention span is actually quite a rare commodity these days. I've
had to actually physically restrain users from reflexively clicking away
error dialogs while trying to help them debug things. And we regularly
get bug reports where the problem is quite clear once I quote back the
error message to the user from the bottom of their report. I'm quite
convinced that a large chunk of users won't read more than a simple
sentence unless they're forced to. And we have no good way to force
them.

So we really should try to stick to one line. With another optional line
in parentheses for advice on what to do.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.