Notes and questions while reading the documentation

Notes and questions while reading the documentation

[Christian Meder]

Hi,

while (proof-)reading the Documentation I noted down some remarks and
questions:

* a lot of the manpages include something like "v0.1, June 2005" in the
header; these versions tags are pretty obscure to interpret, timestamp
when last edited ? version of the manpage ? version of git when the
manpage was included ? maturity the author assigned to the content ?
If these tags don't follow some sane schema they should be removed.

* git-applymbox: -q for interactivity seems like a strange choice, ok I
knew -i for interactive and -q for quiet but -q for interactive editing
is _not_ really intuitive

* the usage of git, Git and GIT isn't consistent in the documentation.
I'd vote for only using git.

* git-clone says that http transport is not supported yet I used it to
clone the git repo from kernel.org yesterday. Should the documentation
get updated ?

* the manpage synopsises aren't consistent wrt command naming; it's "git
commit" but "git-branch"; I guess all the manpages should reference
their commands as "git-x" and not "git x"

Greetings,



				Christian 
-- 
Christian Meder, email: chris@absolutegiganten.org

The Way-Seeking Mind of a tenzo is actualized 
by rolling up your sleeves.

                (Eihei Dogen Zenji)

Re: Notes and questions while reading the documentation

[Junio C Hamano]

Christian Meder <chris@absolutegiganten.org> writes:

> * a lot of the manpages include something like "v0.1, June 2005" in the
> header; these versions tags are pretty obscure to interpret, timestamp
> when last edited ? version of the manpage ? version of git when the
> manpage was included ? maturity the author assigned to the content ?
> If these tags don't follow some sane schema they should be removed.

I think the original intent was the last modification datestamp
and the version of the documentation, but I agree it should be
removed.  I do not think they show on the HTML version, nor man
pages, although I have to admit that I haven't looked at
generated manpages for some time.

> * git-applymbox: -q for interactivity seems like a strange choice, ok I
> knew -i for interactive and -q for quiet but -q for interactive editing
> is _not_ really intuitive

Last night I felt the same way, and an rewrite [*1*] of
applymbox I am working on uses '-i' instead.  If users do not
object, I would vote for changing applymbox to use '-i' as well.

The user community consensus does not have to be unanimous, but
anybody who has linux kernel tree on kernel.org servers has a
veto on this, I should say.  It's the tool they use every day.

> * the usage of git, Git and GIT isn't consistent in the documentation.
> I'd vote for only using git.

Sounds sane.  What would we do if we need to start sentences with it?

> * git-clone says that http transport is not supported yet I used it to
> clone the git repo from kernel.org yesterday. Should the documentation
> get updated ?

Thanks for noticing.  Yes, now HTTP can handle both of the
trickier setups (packed, and alternates); credit goes to Daniel.

> * the manpage synopsises aren't consistent wrt command naming; it's "git
> commit" but "git-branch"; I guess all the manpages should reference
> their commands as "git-x" and not "git x"

Agreed.

Again, thanks for taking the time to do this.

[Footnote]

*1* Why rewrite?  One reason was I was afraid to break things
for Linus ;-).  And I wanted to add a bit more interactivity and
restartability.  The ultimate goal is to make 'git-rebase' and
'git-cherry-pick' faster and easier to use.  The idea is not to
always do 3-way merge, but essentailly feed format-patch output
(now it can do --stdout) into the new applymbox, and when patch
applies cleanly things will go faster, otherwise it will fall
back to 3-way merge behaviour.

Re: Notes and questions while reading the documentation

[Christian Meder]

Sorry for being slow.

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 16:30 -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
> Christian Meder <chris@absolutegiganten.org> writes:
> 
> > * a lot of the manpages include something like "v0.1, June 2005" in the
> > header; these versions tags are pretty obscure to interpret, timestamp
> > when last edited ? version of the manpage ? version of git when the
> > manpage was included ? maturity the author assigned to the content ?
> > If these tags don't follow some sane schema they should be removed.
> 
> I think the original intent was the last modification datestamp
> and the version of the documentation, but I agree it should be
> removed.  I do not think they show on the HTML version, nor man
> pages, although I have to admit that I haven't looked at
> generated manpages for some time.

Ok. I've done a patch to remove them in a separate email.

> > * the usage of git, Git and GIT isn't consistent in the documentation.
> > I'd vote for only using git.
> 
> Sounds sane.  What would we do if we need to start sentences with it?

I prepared a patch which changes all usages to git even at the beginning
of sentences.  

> > * git-clone says that http transport is not supported yet I used it to
> > clone the git repo from kernel.org yesterday. Should the documentation
> > get updated ?
> 
> Thanks for noticing.  Yes, now HTTP can handle both of the
> trickier setups (packed, and alternates); credit goes to Daniel.

I noted it down for my second sweep.

> > * the manpage synopsises aren't consistent wrt command naming; it's "git
> > commit" but "git-branch"; I guess all the manpages should reference
> > their commands as "git-x" and not "git x"
> 
> Agreed.
> 

Ok. Patch in separate email.


				Christian

-- 
Christian Meder, email: chris@absolutegiganten.org

The Way-Seeking Mind of a tenzo is actualized 
by rolling up your sleeves.

                (Eihei Dogen Zenji)