Why you don't want to allow disabling "branches are global and permanent, did you want a bookmark"?

Adrian Buehlmann adrian at cadifra.com
Wed Aug 8 06:58:50 CDT 2012


On 2012-08-08 13:35, Mads Kiilerich wrote:
> On 08/08/12 13:10, v wrote:
>> I humbly suggest that this is objectively bad UI design, not just a matter of
>> personal preference. Asking "do you want to do something else instead?"
>> every time a branch is created implies a deprecated feature or one which
>> should rarely be used, not just warning the user about a common
>> misunderstanding.

I concur.

> The root cause of the "problem" is that git started using the name 
> "branch" for something that was temporary. Many new Mercurial users thus 
> have wrong expectations when they start using Mercurial. This message is 
> an attempt at mitigating one of the first and major issue these users 
> have with Mercurial.
> 
> Nobody denied that the message could be improved. This is the -devel 
> list - please try to contribute a convincing a patch.

My patch would be to remove that warning. But that's not what you want,
obviously.

If git users have a problem with Mercurial, then someone who wants to
help them may write an extension, if they want such a message.

Annoying the Mercurial users who know what a Mercurial branch is with
such a message is indeed pretty silly.


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