git.vger.kernel.org archive mirror
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* A failing attempt to use Git in a centralized environment
@ 2014-04-28  6:29 Marat Radchenko
  2014-04-28 18:41 ` Junio C Hamano
                   ` (3 more replies)
  0 siblings, 4 replies; 73+ messages in thread
From: Marat Radchenko @ 2014-04-28  6:29 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: git

Setup:
20 people (programmers, artists, designers) with prior SVN knowledge and a desire to use Git for a new project (mostly on programmers side). Non-programmers used TortoiseSVN before so choosing TortoiseGit as a GUI was an obvios step.

We made an in-house presentation introducing basic Git concepts and how it is different from SVN. Also, individual training was done for each person who didn't have Git experience. During this training, they tried everyday tasks of updating, committing, pushing changes and viewing history on a toy repository. 

Problem #1: TortoiseGit GUI windows for common tasks have a heck lots of controls that a common Git user will never need. Just look at a monstrosity of its push dialog [1]. This was kinda fixed by training users to use Git Sync dialog [2].

"Autoload PuTTY key"? What the hell is this? Why I can switch it on/off in Git Push but it is disabled in Git Sync? What is PuTTY doing here at all, I'm using OpenSSH.

Problem #2 occured the first day we started using Git on real project. It is explained in detail in older post to Git ML [3]. I call it "swapped/reverse merge problem".

In short:
1. Hack, hack, hack
2. Commit
3. Push, woops, reject (non-ff)
4. Pull
5. Push

The root of evil is step #4 that creates a merge commit with "swapped" parents - local commits become first parent, remote commits become second. If one would want to make proper parent order, he would have to:
1. git fetch
2. git checkout origin/master -b tmp
3. git merge master
4. git push
5. git checkout master
6. git merge origin/master
7. git branch -d tmp

And all this branch dance produces exactly the same commit (content-wise) as simple "pull, push" sequence with the only difference in parent order. And things become even worse if comeone pushes more commits to remote repo while you perform this dance.

We can't expect all developers (especially, designers and artist) to do it. They don't want to use branches and just work on mainline. This is especially important on early development stages when new features (that designers' work depends upon) are added every day.

Additionally, many git-related tools depend on first-parent convention and show wrong graphs/diffs.

Problem #3: on conflicts, user ends up with a working copy that marks all remote-changed files as modified. Luckily, nobody has problems with conflict resolution process, it's just confusing to see changes other way round.

Okay, then, let's try rebase workflow. "git config pull.rebase true" and go.

Problem #4: when conflict happens during rebase, mergetool shows user own changes as "theirs" and remote changes as "mine". And believe me, explaining this to users doesn't increase their willingness to adopt Git.

Problem #5 (TortoiseGit-related): for some dumb reason, TortoiseGit's rebase is not a git rebase! Worse, TortoiseGit doesn't have any button to say 'git rebase --continue". So we had to cancel "pull.rebase=true" approach and teach users to use "Fetch&Rebase" button. It would be usable if only TortoiseGit didn't show rebase dialog even when everything was already up-to-date. And even git-aware developers don't understand the idea behind "Force rebase" checkbox in rebase dialog and why anyone would ever want to have it disabled (and it is disabled by default).

Problem #6: push - reject - pull - push sequence sometimes transforms into a loop with several iterations and doesn't add happiness.

So... Any suggestions how to make life easier are welcome.

[1] http://tortoisegit.googlecode.com/git/doc/images/en/GitPush.png
[2] http://tortoisegit.googlecode.com/git/doc/images/en/GitSync.png
[3] http://git.661346.n2.nabble.com/first-parent-commit-graph-layout-and-pull-merge-direction-td7586671.html

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 73+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2014-05-04 21:04 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 73+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2014-04-28  6:29 A failing attempt to use Git in a centralized environment Marat Radchenko
2014-04-28 18:41 ` Junio C Hamano
2014-04-30 14:21   ` Pull is Evil (was: Re: A failing attempt to use Git in a centralized environment) Marc Branchaud
2014-04-30 14:55     ` Junio C Hamano
2014-04-30 19:45       ` Pull is Evil Marc Branchaud
2014-04-30 20:01         ` Jonathan Nieder
2014-04-30 20:01         ` Junio C Hamano
2014-04-30 21:48           ` Marc Branchaud
2014-05-02  7:40           ` Andreas Krey
2014-05-02  8:46             ` David Kastrup
2014-05-03  6:17               ` Andreas Krey
2014-05-03  6:55                 ` David Kastrup
2014-04-30 20:14         ` Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 22:06           ` Marc Branchaud
2014-04-30 22:25             ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01  9:46               ` brian m. carlson
2014-05-01 10:48                 ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 15:16                   ` Junio C Hamano
2014-05-01 19:16                     ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 19:48                       ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-01 20:07                         ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-01 23:25                           ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02  0:02                             ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02  0:37                               ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02  1:10                                 ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02  1:14                                   ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 14:54                                     ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02 18:55                                       ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 19:07                                         ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02 19:10                                           ` David Kastrup
2014-05-02 19:13                                           ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 19:46                                             ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02 20:34                                               ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 21:13                                                 ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02 21:18                                                   ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 22:01                                                     ` pull.prompt or other way to slow/disable 'git pull' (was: Pull is Evil) W. Trevor King
2014-05-02 22:20                                                       ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-03  0:05                                                         ` pull.prompt or other way to slow/disable 'git pull' W. Trevor King
2014-05-03  9:50                                                           ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-04 18:51                                                             ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-04 20:54                                                               ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 23:20                         ` Re: Pull is Evil Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 15:20                 ` Marc Branchaud
2014-05-01 17:56                   ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-01 18:04                     ` Marc Branchaud
2014-05-01 18:30                       ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-01 20:21                         ` Marc Branchaud
2014-05-01 23:28                           ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02  7:16                           ` Andreas Krey
2014-05-02  8:14                             ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-02 19:29                           ` Junio C Hamano
2014-05-02 19:53                             ` Junio C Hamano
2014-05-01 23:45                       ` brian m. carlson
2014-05-01 23:39                         ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 19:22                   ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 19:43                     ` Marc Branchaud
2014-05-01 19:27                 ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 21:06         ` Philip Oakley
2014-05-01 21:16           ` Philip Oakley
2014-05-01 23:34           ` Felipe Contreras
2014-05-01 23:59             ` W. Trevor King
2014-05-02  0:31               ` Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 16:47     ` Pull is Evil (was: Re: A failing attempt to use Git in a centralized environment) Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 17:09       ` Pull is Evil Matthieu Moy
2014-04-30 18:31         ` Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 19:10           ` Junio C Hamano
2014-04-30 19:32             ` Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 19:53               ` Junio C Hamano
2014-04-30 20:11                 ` Felipe Contreras
2014-04-30 16:12 ` A failing attempt to use Git in a centralized environment Stepan Kasal
2014-04-30 17:15 ` Geert Bosch
2014-05-04  8:58   ` John Szakmeister
2014-05-02 20:56 ` Max Kirillov

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).