On July 6, 2021 4:56 PM, Junio C Hamano wrote: >"Randall S. Becker" <rsbecker@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > >>>If you do: >>> >>> % git merge --ff-only >>> fatal: Not possible to fast-forward, aborting. >>> >>>That "aborting" part is redundant; we know `git merge` should abort >> if the fast-forward is not possible, we explicitely told git to do >> that. >> >> `git merge` is a special operation where errors (conflicts, for one) >> may leave the repository in a merge pending state where you >> subsequently may have to use `git merge --abort` to reset the >> situation or `git add` to continue. The `aborting` output makes it >> clear that you do not have to do the `--abort` and *cannot* do the >> `add` because there was an implicit `--abort` done resulting from the >> failure. This is important information for the user. > >If so, adding ", aborting" to the end is misleading. In this particular failure mode, the command pretends that the merge did not even >start. You know that, and I know that. I contend that git users do not generally want to care about failure modes. While a flow description might be instructive, I doubt many git users would look at it. We can only hope that front ends know how to make this clean for them. -Randall
