Looking at the tests, one downside of this is that without any commit ids, the user might wonder if something important was abandoned. They might think this anyway, but with a commit id they'll see that it's an old version of a commit that they still have (in the common case) or from a branch they just deleted.

This might be helped by printing a couple of commit summaries and then saying "Abandoned XX more commits". Or we could try it as is, or perhaps another idea will appear.

Perhaps "Abandoned 5 no longer relevant commits" would calm people down compared to "Abandoned 5 commits."? We could try something like that and see if that's good enough.

Somewhat surprisingly, I think it'd calm me down somewhat if I was new to jj. Obviously, I'm guessing.

How about "Abandoned N obsolete commits"?

I think a new person might not understand the difference between "abandoned" and "obsolete". Something like "that became obsolete after the refs moved" or "that became obsolete after the remote-tracking branch was deleted" would be OK.

Maybe "Abandoned NN commits that became obsolete due to the changes to branches or other refs."?

You can later change the message to mention the specific refs in question.

Maybe "Abandoned NN commits that became obsolete due to the changes to branches or other refs."?

Or "Abandoned N commits that are no longer reachable."? Is that accurate and clear enough?

Or "Abandoned N commits that are no longer reachable."? Is that accurate and clear enough?

I think that's good enough for me.

I'd prefer it if we mentioned branches or something as the cause, but my version is admittedly a bit verbose and I can't immediately come up with a better one.

Thank you!