Re: Concern about new binding.

[Joost Kremers]

On Thu, Feb 04 2021, Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> The one concern about the `C-x g' binding is that Magit already
> recommends it, but it's unclear to me how many people actually use it,
> and what it's bound to.  Is it just a global binding for `M-x magit'?

`magit-status`, to be exact. (Though `magit` is an alias for `magit-status`.)

> Presumably Magit users who've bound it to that will continue to do so...

Well... The thing is, Magit nowadays sets up `C-x g` (and two other bindings) by
default, but *only* if those keys aren't already bound to something else. So 
once
Emacs starts binding `C-x g` to something by default, the binding won't work for
magit anymore. User who are used to using `C-x g` for `magit-status` will
suddenly find themselves reverting buffers when they upgrade their Emacs.

FYI, details about Magit's default bindings are here:

https://magit.vc/manual/magit/Default-Bindings.html#Default-Bindings

> So I don't know whether this is something we should worry about.

I suspect it will lead to countless confused users asking numerous questions on
every available help forum. Also, given that many Magit tutorials on the web
mention `C-x g`, and assuming that many of them won't be updated, it's likely
new users will be confused by this for years to come.

Whether the latter should be a concern is debatable, of course: we all have to
contend with outdated information on the web. But given the way Magit handles
its bindings right now, it would be good to give the Magit maintainers a
heads-up if the new binding is kept, so they can decide how to deal with it.


-- 
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments