Re: Git User's Survey 2008 partial summary, part 4 - how do we use Git

From: Andreas Ericsson <ae@op5.se>
Date: Sep 7, 2008, 08:31 UTC
Message-ID: <48C39145.9020709@op5.se>
In-Reply-To: <200809070017.09463.jnareb@gmail.com>

Jakub Narebski wrote:

> 
> Analysis: strangely "git add + git commit" is slightly more used than
> "git commit -a"; I would suspect that "git commit -a" would dominate a
> bit over other forms of committing.

I believe people have finally gotten to grasp with the index. Besides, those answers are probably a bit skewed, as people that use git as just a faster and better cvs/svn aren't likely to be those who answer the survey.

Show 5 quoted lines

>  What is for me more suprising is
> that "git commit <file>..." has such large presence in often used
> commands; I would think that it should be mostly used as 'sometimes'
> command.
>

I know myself and most others where I work use it as a 'fixup' command. One commit is done, the second is being staged (git add or git add -i), while testing reveals some silly bug in one of the files from the last commit. Assuming that file isn't touched again, it's easy to fix up using "git commit --amend <file>", as that automatically sets up a new index so that the staged changes remain staged.

The alternative would be to do a mixed reset, git add <file>, git commit --amend. Not so sexy.

Show 22 quoted lines

> 
> Top 10 rarely used commands
> 
> ===================================
> Command + options      | rarely [%]
> -----------------------------------
> git revert             | 31% (454)
> git pull <URL> <ref>   | 22% (348)
> git blame              | 21% (328)
> git fetch [<options>]  | 20% (313)
> git rebase             | 20% (291)
> git remote             | 20% (289)
> git merge              | 18% (286)
> git apply              | 18% (284)
> git pull --rebase      | 18% (283)
> 
> Analysis: "git pull <URL> <ref>", direct pull without using
> remote-tracking branches, is quite popular among rarely used
> commands.  Strange that "git pull ---rebase" is among rarely
> used; I would think it is question of workflow... but perhaps
> rarely encountered workflow.
>

Perhaps many who use it don't know that they are. The "git sync" alias is much in use where I work. It's basically just a "git pull --rebase && git push". As it was suggested on the mailing list and also listed in some tutorial somewhere (don't know where), I can imagine quite a lot of people using it without realising it.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson                   andreas.ericsson@op5.se
OP5 AB                             www.op5.se
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