Re: svn versus git

From: Horst H. von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl>
Date: Dec 15, 2006, 15:19 UTC
Message-ID: <200612151519.kBFFJSYn012227@laptop13.inf.utfsm.cl>
In-Reply-To: <jnareb@gmail.com>

Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com> wrote:

Show 25 quoted lines

> Andy Parkins wrote:
> 
> > On Wednesday 2006 December 13 22:56, Shawn Pearce wrote:
> > 
> >>   git cat-file -p $REV:$file
> >>
> >> not sure how much easier it gets than that.  Load in the bash
> >> completion from contrib/completion and you can even tab complete
> >> the $file part.
> > 
> > Yes.  I was a little unfair on that one; I forgot about the REV:file syntax.  
> > However, it's still not simple for a new user; I think I'd say "draw" if 
> > the "-p" weren't a requirement.
> 
>   $ git repo-config alias.less "-p cat-file -p"
>   $ git repo-config alias.cat     "cat-file -p"
> 
> remedies that.
> 
> [...]
> >> How is it unfriendly?  What specifically would you change to make
> >> it more friendly?
> > 
> > $ git-ls-tree v1.0.0
> > 100644 blob 906e98492080d2fde9467a9970fc92d7a8cfeaf8    Makefile

> > I'm a newbie: what's that number at the front?  What's a blob?  What's
> > that great big number - I've only seen commit hashes that look like
> > that, and that isn't one.  Definitely not friendly.

> The number in front is octal mode of a file or directory. "blob"
> is a file (or symbolic link), "tree" is a directory, all of this
> can be found in git(7).

I don't want to come through as rude, but that you can find the explanation somewhere (and as an old(ish) Unix/git hand you know (or should be able to guess easily) what it means) doesn't help the _newbie_ confronted with this gibberish one iota. Explaining it it the git list also doesn't help. Either make it self-explanatory, relegate this command to git-plumbing or axe its output (perhaps show this only with --verbose or such, with Unix you get fast to the point where you know --verbose is probably totally mistifying except for /real/ experts :-).

[...]

> Perhaps we should add git-ls which would be porcelain frontend
> to git-ls-files and git-ls-tree, just like git-diff is frontend
> to git-diff-files, git-diff-index and git-diff-tree (and also does
> pure blob diff).

That is a more newbie-friendly answer.

-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239