Re: Re* [PATCH] doc: glossary: add entry for revision range

From: Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@gmail.com>
Date: May 18, 2021, 05:02 UTC
Message-ID: <60a34a7616cda_14d1bc20818@natae.notmuch>
In-Reply-To: <YKMhqZNhamnKqWfi@coredump.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King wrote:

Show 16 quoted lines

> On Mon, May 17, 2021 at 04:05:41PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:
> 
> > > >> Nobody uses "origin" (what does that even mean?), [...]
> > > >
> > > > I guess I'm "nobody" then, because I use it all the time.
> > > 
> > > Oh, I'm nobody, too, and so are many others ;-)
> > 
> > That depends on the definition of "many". My guess is that it's less
> > than 1% of users (probably 0.01%), and for me that's not many.
> > 
> > If you google for `git remote "set-head"` there's barely any
> > information. It's basically all online man pages.
> 
> Why would people need to use "git remote set-head" most of the time? The
> symlink is set up properly by git-clone, and has been for many years.

First instructions from GitHub:

  echo "# test" >> README.md
  git init
  git add README.md
  git commit -m "first commit"
  git branch -M main
  git remote add origin git@github.com:felipec/test.git
  git push -u origin main

Second instructions from GitHub:

  git remote add origin git@github.com:felipec/test.git
  git branch -M main
  git push -u origin main

None of these use `git clone`.

Of 31 repositories I work on and have quickly at hand only 8 have origin/HEAD.

> For most people, using "origin" just works (the exception is people who
> "git init" and then "git remote add origin" themselves; since we're
> guessing at numbers, I would guess that _that_ population is less than
> 1% of users).

On what do you base that guess?

The GitHub instructions don't use `git clone`. I can gather similar instructions from other places if you are unconvinced.

I don't think most people set up their repositories as you think they do.

And even *if* origin/HEAD did work on most repositories (hardly the case), most people are not going to train their fingers to type `git cmd $x` when the only $x where the command works is "origin"; they would rather train their fingers to do $x/master which works on many more repositories.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras