From: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
To: git@vger.kernel.org
Subject: git annoyances
Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 12:14:28 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20080409101428.GA2637@elte.hu> (raw)
i just had a rather annoying session with git - here's the dump and
commentary, in case anyone is interested in usability fineprint.
it was with git-core-1.5.4.3-2.fc8 - so if it's all fixed/improved in
1.5.5, or if this is blatant user error for which i deserve to be
punished then my apologies!
usually i just have a single git repo that tracks everything
interesting, but this time i did something i rarely do: i tried to merge
one local tree of mine into another local tree of mine. So i had no
commands (or even concepts) cached in my short-term memory that would
achieve this goal, i just tried the commands that i thought to be
'obvious', without applying much (or any) IQ to those commands:
$ cd linux-2.6-sched-devel.git
$ git-remote add ~/linux-2.6-x86.git
$ git-remote show x86
* remote x86
URL: /home/mingo/linux-2.6-x86.git
New remote branches (next fetch will store in remotes/x86)
base for-akpm for-linus latest master testing
$ git-merge x86/latest
x86/latest - not something we can merge
#
# ho hum. Not something 'we' can merge. Do i care? :-) There's no
# actionable reference given to the user about how to resolve this
# problem. So i kept on trying:
#
$ git-fetch x86/latest
fatal: 'x86/latest': unable to chdir or not a git archive
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
$ git-pull x86/latest
fatal: 'x86/latest': unable to chdir or not a git archive
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly
#
# hm. two fatal messages, suggesting that there's something really
# wrong while there's nothing wrong.
#
what got me going after experimenting around some more was this exact
command:
$ git-pull x86 latest
(that fetch+merge went problem-free.)
but it was a PITA and all of git's messages about the problem were not
only unhelpful, they confused me into looking for problems where there
were none IMO. I was starting to wonder whether i have to have some git
daemon running on that box for example. But in retrospect IMO it was
rather clear from the outset what i wanted git to do (merge the tip of
my other tree into the tip of this tree, on the local box, no frills), i
just didnt figure out the exact command to do it.
another (minor) usability annoyance: one of the first things i tried was
to verify the remote setup, via:
$ git-remote show
which gave me this answer:
Usage: git remote show <remote>
then i tried git-remote show -a (to list all repositories, etc.) - what
i didnt figure out was to show all repositories is to do a simple
"git-remote". I think "git-remote show" should output all repositories,
or at least indicate it in its help line what to do to get such a list.
(for us poor sobs forgetting commandline details ;)
also, the first natural thing i did was to just type:
$ git-merge ~/linux-2.6-x86.git/
which i naively assumed would sort things out for me and provide some
reasonable default behavior - but instead it just gave an annoyingly
unhelpful error message:
/home/mingo/linux-2.6-x86.git/ - not something we can merge
there should really be a consciously established "route of failure
resolution" - directing people towards relevant sources of information
or commands when the git command-line utilities return some error due to
user incompetence. Otherwise users just guess around and get frustrated.
also, i think this session also probably matches the newbie's experience
about git, and making certain git operations so hard to achieve is
certainly not a reassuring experience for them either. [ Or shall they
all be filtered out as fundamentally incompetent people? ;-) ]
Ingo
next reply other threads:[~2008-04-09 10:15 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 86+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2008-04-09 10:14 Ingo Molnar [this message]
2008-04-09 10:41 ` git annoyances Björn Steinbrink
2008-04-09 14:57 ` Jeff King
2008-04-09 15:15 ` [PATCH] git-remote: show all remotes with "git remote show" Jeff King
2008-04-09 16:54 ` Johannes Schindelin
2008-04-10 10:56 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-09 20:07 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-04-10 19:59 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-04-09 17:08 ` git annoyances Avery Pennarun
2008-04-10 8:41 ` Karl Hasselström
2008-04-10 15:05 ` Avery Pennarun
2008-04-11 7:00 ` Karl Hasselström
2008-04-09 20:08 ` Friendly refspecs (Was: Re: git annoyances) Teemu Likonen
2008-04-09 20:32 ` Avery Pennarun
2008-04-09 20:34 ` Jeff King
2008-04-09 22:25 ` Teemu Likonen
2008-04-09 22:51 ` Jeff King
2008-04-10 0:03 ` Jeff King
2008-04-10 0:11 ` Jeff King
2008-04-10 7:51 ` Friendly refspecs Junio C Hamano
2008-04-10 8:03 ` Jeff King
[not found] ` <bd6139dc0804091616k53f4e0c1sf75aa9585c5a54c5@mail.gmail.com>
2008-04-10 0:33 ` Friendly refspecs (Was: Re: git annoyances) Jeff King
2008-04-10 7:58 ` Sverre Rabbelier
2008-04-13 9:31 ` Friendly refspecs Teemu Likonen
2008-04-13 9:34 ` [PATCH] Add examples section to 'git fetch' manual Teemu Likonen
2008-04-13 18:56 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-13 19:48 ` Matt Graham
2008-04-13 20:05 ` Teemu Likonen
2008-04-14 1:02 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-16 3:48 ` Friendly refspecs Jeff King
2008-04-16 4:25 ` Jeff King
2008-04-16 4:41 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-16 4:47 ` Jeff King
2008-04-16 15:42 ` Daniel Barkalow
2008-04-16 20:03 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-22 10:56 ` Jeff King
2008-04-22 16:52 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-22 17:19 ` Daniel Barkalow
2008-04-22 20:12 ` Jeff King
2008-04-22 20:05 ` Jeff King
2008-04-22 20:45 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-22 21:52 ` Jeff King
2008-04-23 4:24 ` Teemu Likonen
2008-04-23 5:52 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-23 6:24 ` Andreas Ericsson
2008-04-23 9:16 ` Jeff King
2008-04-23 9:21 ` Jeff King
2008-04-23 11:15 ` Teemu Likonen
2008-04-09 21:21 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-10 7:38 ` Teemu Likonen
2008-04-12 18:59 ` git annoyances Santiago Gala
2008-04-09 19:21 ` Daniel Barkalow
2008-04-09 20:41 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-04-10 14:08 ` Daniel Barkalow
2008-04-09 21:04 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-09 21:39 ` Jon Loeliger
2008-04-09 23:45 ` Nicolas Pitre
2008-04-09 21:45 ` Jeff King
2008-04-09 23:56 ` André Goddard Rosa
2008-04-10 19:45 ` Govind Salinas
2008-04-10 6:08 ` Jean-Christian de Rivaz
2008-04-10 8:19 ` Sverre Rabbelier
2008-04-10 11:47 ` git-bisect annoyances Ingo Molnar
2008-04-11 5:41 ` Christian Couder
2008-04-11 11:41 ` Ingo Molnar
2008-04-12 6:56 ` Christian Couder
2008-04-11 5:56 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-10 23:25 ` [PATCH] When a remote is added but not fetched, tell the user Gabriel
2008-04-11 15:21 ` Johannes Schindelin
2008-04-11 18:35 ` Gabriel
2008-04-11 18:39 ` [PATCH] Default to fetching a remote after adding it Gabriel
2008-04-11 19:17 ` Stephen Sinclair
2008-04-12 14:33 ` Johannes Schindelin
2008-04-12 15:13 ` Gabriel
2008-04-12 15:24 ` Johannes Schindelin
2008-04-11 19:08 ` [PATCH] When a remote is added but not fetched, tell the user Teemu Likonen
2008-04-11 21:39 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-11 22:35 ` Sverre Rabbelier
2008-04-11 23:15 ` Junio C Hamano
2008-04-11 23:20 ` Sverre Rabbelier
2008-04-15 3:15 ` Miles Bader
2008-04-11 19:29 ` [PATCH] Default to fetching a remote after adding it Gabriel
2008-04-11 19:36 ` Wincent Colaiuta
2008-04-11 19:46 ` Gabriel
2008-04-11 10:15 ` git annoyances Luciano Rocha
2008-04-11 10:27 ` Wincent Colaiuta
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