Re: how to display file history?

From: J. Bruce Fields <bfields@fieldses.org>
Date: May 15, 2006, 17:55 UTC
Message-ID: <20060515175549.GD15165@fieldses.org>
In-Reply-To: <m164k76ylb.fsf@ebiederm.dsl.xmission.com>

On Mon, May 15, 2006 at 10:29:20AM -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> Sure.  If it gets included in a tutorial is great, but existing
> users aren't likely to read through a tutorial if they think they
> know what is going on.
> 
> Having it documented in the man pages (i.e. the reference
> documentation) which is where people look to check up on the fine
> points of a command is more likely to matter.

Looks like the current git-log man page refers you to the git-rev-list page for that, and the use of path names is documented there.

I think that's a pretty reasonable approach for reference documentation, which should be concise. Duplicating the git-rev-list documentation (even some of it) to every man page to which it's relevant would add a lot of text.

The current git-log man page is misleading, though--it suggests that git-log accepts (and git-rev-list documents) only options, which might discourage a reader from tracking down information about non-option arguments.

I also agree about the tutorial--the "Keeping track of history" section would be a good place to introduce this and git-grep with some fun examples. It's on my todo list, but may take a while, so maybe someone else can beat me to it....

--b.