Re: [PATCH,RFC 1/2] Make the list of common commands more exclusive

From: Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>
Date: Nov 12, 2007, 06:22 UTC
Message-ID: <20071112062222.GA17462@thunk.org>
In-Reply-To: <7vzlxk8apz.fsf@gitster.siamese.dyndns.org>

On Sun, Nov 11, 2007 at 06:21:44PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote:

Show 14 quoted lines

> Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu> writes:
> 
> > Remove apply, archive, cherry-pick, prune, revert, and show-branch, so
> > "git help" is less intimidating.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
> >
> > -apply
> > -archive
> > -prune
> > -revert
> > -show-branch
> 
> I am fine with this list, perhaps except apply.

I was borderline on apply, but given that people are familiar with patch -p1, the only real advantage git-apply has is that automatically deals with new files (which "git commit -a" or "git add -u" won't automatically get).

What did you think about cherry-pick?  Was that omitted by accident?

> On the other hand, if you are shooting *really* for the absolute
> minimum set for the beginners, I would kill rm and possibly mv)
> in addition to your list:

Those did cross my mind as well.  :-)

Show 6 quoted lines

> I have a bit of reservation about revert, but I'd imagine we
> could kill it, and also fetch, pull and push, if you are
> shooting for *real* beginners who work alone.  I think the only
> valid justification to drop "revert" from the list is to assume
> that the audience do not interact with the outside world, and
> dropping fetch/pull/push from the list is in line with that.

My mental model for git newbies is that they would probably be pulling from upstream repositories (so I was tempted to remove git-init from the common commands list), but they would rarely be cherry-picking or reverting other people's changes.

They probably would be submitting changes back upstream using e-mail before they learn how to publish their own repository, so commands I'd be tempted to add would include git-format-patch, git-send-email, and git-cherry. But these commands are pretty complicated for beginners....

	     	       		    	   - Ted