git/list[1] front-page[2] threads[3] people[4] search[5] about
 

Git pull confusing output

From
Will <william.duclot@gmail.com>
Date
Nov 27, 2018, 16:52 UTC
Message-ID
<758FA299-0842-4462-8CF6-D7210D26A6C7@gmail.com>

I’m far from being a guru, but I consider myself a competent Git user. Yet, here’s my understanding of the output of one the most-used commands, `git push`:

> Counting objects: 6, done.

No idea what an “object” is. Apparently there’s 6 of them here. What does “counting” them means? Should I care?

> Delta compression using up to 4 threads.

No idea what is “delta compression”, I suppose something is being compressed. It’s using anything between 1 and 4 threads, which is not a very precise or useful information. Should I care?

> Compressing objects: 100% (6/6), done.

I still don’t know what objects are, but I appreciate having feedback on progress

> Writing objects: 100% (6/6), 656 bytes | 656.00 KiB/s, done.
Writing what, where? Should I care? Still good to have feedback
> Total 6 (delta 4), reused 0 (delta 0)
No idea what any of those numbers mean. Should I care?
> remote: Resolving deltas: 100% (4/4), completed with 4 local objects.

I do know what’s a remote, but I don’t know what “resolving deltas” means. There’s local objects now? I don’t understand what happened to those local objects, are they the byproduct of the delta resolving or the input or something else? Should I care?

> To github.com:williamdclt/some-repo.git
Fair enough
> 1ca9aaa..4320d30  master -> master
Fair enough

All in all, I didn’t understand most of what I’ve been told, and don’t seem to care about it. Don’t take my sassiness for disrespect, I really appreciate (and am impressed by) everything that happens here, but I feel like a less confusing UI is such a low-hanging fruit. How many devs understand what all of this means, 1%-2% if even that? And even them, do they need this info every time they push?

I feel like a less intimidating output would help, while showing info about objects and deltas with the verbose flag:

> Compressing… done
> Pushing to github.com:williamdclt/some-repo.git… done
> 1ca9aaa..4320d30  master -> master

I’d be more than happy to work on this (`git push` is an example amongst so many other), but want the mailing list’s opinion on it. Am I wrong in thinking that this output is not something users want, am I fighting windmills or maybe just being ignorant?

Next: Stefan Beller
Message 1 of 6 in “Git pull confusing output”
  1. WillNov 27, 2018
  2. Stefan BellerNov 27, 2018
  3. WillNov 27, 2018
  4. Ævar Arnfjörð BjarmasonNov 27, 2018
  5. Junio C HamanoNov 28, 2018
  6. Stefan BellerNov 28, 2018

Read the whole thread, see it on lore, or plain text.

$ cat FOOTERMessages come from the public archive at lore.kernel.org/git, fetched every hour. The front page is chosen and written each morning by an AI editor and can be wrong; the threads themselves are the record. About and API. For agents: an MCP server at https://gitlist.dev/mcp, and any thread, story or person page as Markdown by adding .md to its URL (or sending Accept: text/markdown). Details in /llms.txt.