Re: suggestion for git glossary: "ort"

From: Steve Summit <scs@eskimo.com>
Date: Apr 18, 2022, 10:16 UTC
Message-ID: <2022Apr18.0616.scs.0001@quinine2.home>
In-Reply-To: <xmqq5yn84pm2.fsf@gitster.g>

gitster wrote:

Show 7 quoted lines

> scs@eskimo.com (Steve Summit) writes:
>> I kept seeing references to "ort" in the git source code, and I
>> had no idea what it meant.
>
> If the aim is to unconfuse those who are new to the codebase, read
> builtin/merge.c and merge-ort-*.[ch], and wonder what "ort" refers
> to, I doubt it would help all that much...

All I can say is that I am someone who is new to the codebase, kept seeing references to "ort", and had no idea what it meant. It didn't occur to me that it might be a merge strategy; for all I knew orts were things that needed to be merged.

> Or is your main issue is even after you discover that "ort" is one
> of the merge strategies supported by Git, it is unclear how that
> short non-word was invented?

Well, that too, but really, my thinking was much more simple than that: A glossary is where you define special terminology. "ort" is special terminology in git. Therefore, I thought it belonged in git's glossary. BICBW.

> ...I doubt it would help all that much to add a new entry to the
> glossary, especially if they do not think of first taking a look at
> "git merge --help", which has its own large section on "ort".

Call me stupid :-), but I did not think first of looking there! But you'll notice I added a link to that page in the suggested glossary entry. (I doubt I got the markdown link syntax right, though.)