Re: [PATCH] user-manual: Use "git config --global" instead of editing ~/.gitconfig

From: Petr Baudis <pasky@suse.cz>
Date: May 10, 2007, 23:00 UTC
Message-ID: <20070510230045.GF4489@pasky.or.cz>
In-Reply-To: <20070510220253.GZ13719@fieldses.org>

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 12:02:53AM CEST, J. Bruce Fields wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Thu, May 10, 2007 at 11:53:31PM +0200, Johan Herland wrote:
> > Use git-config for setting global user.name and user.email rather than
> > telling the user to edit ~/.gitconfig directly. This brings 
> > user-manual.txt in line with tutorial.txt.
> 
> The inconsistency is intentional.  We want users to know about
> git-config, because it's helpful when writing scripts, and because it
> has a useful manpage.  But we also want them to know about the
> config-file syntax, since most of us find reading and editing a file
> more intuitive than running git-config.  So we use a mixture of both.

However, in that case I think this is not the good point to show ~/.gitconfig. Your goal at that point should be to get the user able to commit as simply as possible, and having to manually edit some config file is unnecessary hassle when you can just use these two simple commands; also, we use the same commands in tutorials, crash courses etc. So I really think that consistency is better here. The more viable strategy is to mention that git-config really just plays with simple text files at some... later point. :-)

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
Stuff: http://pasky.or.cz/
Ever try. Ever fail. No matter. // Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
		-- Samuel Beckett