Re: Git User's Survey 2007 unfinished summary continued

["Jakub Narebski" <jnareb@gmail.com>]

On 10/19/07, Federico Mena Quintero <federico@novell.com> wrote:

> "Make git more task-oriented rather than data-model-oriented" is about
> making the tool adapt to what you usually want to do, instead of making
> *you* adapt to the way the tool wants to work.  Many commands in Git
> have documentation like
>
>   "option --foo updates the refs without modifying the index.  Requires
>   a clean working tree"
>
> This is gibberish for people who are not very familiar with Git's
> internals.  "Git for computer scientists" provides a *very nice*
> explanation of the DAG and refs and tags, but unfortunately it doesn't
> explain the index, why you would want to know about it, etc.

That is what "Git User's Manual" (and tutorials) is for. And there is
glossary in documentation.

[...]
> It's nice that Git lets you manipulate the repository in all kinds of
> ways, but presenting porcelains at the same level as plumbing makes
> things hard for users to learn.  I was just in our Beijing office,
> teaching people about development tools and Git in particular.
>
>   Federico: "get Git from this location"
>
>   Beijing hacker: tap tap tap, "okay, it's installed now"
>
>   Federico "Git commands all start with 'git'"
>
>   Beijing hacker: git<Tab>
>
>   Bash: Display all 150 possibilities?
>
>   Beijing hacker: "oh, shit..."

It is better to use bash (or zsh) completion, than rely on completion
of commands names.

Beijing hacker: git <Tab>

(that is, space after 'git') shows around 62 commands.

> It's hard to know where to begin :)  Do I need "git-cherry-pick" or
> "git-cherry"?  Why is the "apply a patch" command called "git-am"?  Why
> is it different from "git-apply"?  From "git-applypatch"?  Etc.

I think git-cherry will soon be obsoleted and removed, such like
git-applymbox and it companion git-applypatch are being obsoleted by
git-am.

git-am applies series of patches _with description_ from messagebox,
creating commits if patch applies without conflicts. It requires git
extended patch for sensible operation; it is best when patch is result
of git-format-patch. git-apply is to apply GNU patch (optionally git
patch) to working area, or working area and index, but do not create a
commit. It is improved version of GNU patch utility (it understands
git extended diff syntax), but it is not meant (alone) to work with
commits send by email.

-- 
Jakub Narebski