From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Govind Salinas" Subject: Re: git annoyances Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:45:36 -0500 Message-ID: <5d46db230804101245yf4a0c22qaee99f2c01256938@mail.gmail.com> References: <20080409101428.GA2637@elte.hu> <7vfxtu3fku.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE Cc: "Junio C Hamano" , "Ingo Molnar" , git@vger.kernel.org To: "=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9_Goddard_Rosa?=" X-From: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Thu Apr 10 21:50:08 2008 Return-path: Envelope-to: gcvg-git-2@gmane.org Received: from vger.kernel.org ([209.132.176.167]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Jk2jT-000863-J9 for gcvg-git-2@gmane.org; Thu, 10 Apr 2008 21:46:52 +0200 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1758466AbYDJTpm convert rfc822-to-quoted-printable (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:45:42 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1757792AbYDJTpm (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:45:42 -0400 Received: from ti-out-0910.google.com ([209.85.142.185]:58302 "EHLO ti-out-0910.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755332AbYDJTpl convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:45:41 -0400 Received: by ti-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id 28so159416tif.23 for ; Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:45:39 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.151.39.2 with SMTP id r2mr2201994ybj.243.1207856736153; Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:45:36 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.150.156.18 with HTTP; Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:45:36 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: Content-Disposition: inline Sender: git-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: git@vger.kernel.org Archived-At: On Wed, Apr 9, 2008 at 6:56 PM, Andr=E9 Goddard Rosa wrote: > > > but it was a PITA and all of git's messages about the problem we= re not > > > only unhelpful, they confused me into looking for problems wher= e there > > > were none IMO. > > > > Yes, we need to teach "git" to do more mind-reading (I am not bei= ng > > sarcastic). There should be a pattern in common user errors that= share > > their roots to the same user misperception, and if we can identif= y that, > > maybe we can make git guess what the user was really trying to do= and give > > better error messages than it currently does. > > Something along the lines of: > > Error description > Why it happened > How to solve/Sugestion > Hi, This actually touches on one of my main purposes behind Pyrite. I int= end to do the following things to help the situation and I was wondering what = the git community's reaction is. 1) Since it will be designed for end users I intend to remove the optio= ns not designed for end users. This will also shorten up the help so that the= entire help can be shown to the user when they encounter an error. 2) No unnamed options. I think this would have helped the above case although it would have required a *bit* more typing. The command would have looked like "pyt pull/fetch -r x86 -b latest" Combined with the a= bove the command would have spit out the help and a message stating what was missing. 3) No syntax. Git has a lot of syntax. It has refspecs, revision rang= es, symbolic names (although i do like these) that a user has to learn. I think this is one of the most error prone parts of the git for new users. Hopefully, I will be able to find simple and straightforward ways for the user to supply this info. Any comments/suggestions will be appreciated. Thanks, Govind.