Re: Git terminology: remote, add, track, stage, etc.

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 19, 2010, 00:03 UTC
Message-ID: <7vaamb2gm6.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTimkovH9OysLSxA+=di89Xi+dTCYL5hRPmNaADDH@mail.gmail.com>

Sverre Rabbelier <srabbelier@gmail.com> writes:

Show 8 quoted lines

>> More radically, I am sure some head scratching would be able to find
>> useful terminology for master, origin/master, and origin’s master. I’d
>> love to see suggestions. As I said, I admire how wonderfully simple
>> and clean this has been implemented, and the documentation, CLI, and
>> terminology should reflect that.
>
> I don't have any objections to changing these terms, but I don't have
> any suggestions on what to change them _to_.

I do not think debating on changing the terminology is a particularly productive use of our time. Just like Thore was confused by "index, cache, add, stage", we would end up adding yet another lingo that cover the same concept, and the problem is that there is _no way_ older words will be forgotten.

But I think the way the concepts are explained and taught by our documentation can and should be improved. For example, as I've written before we use 'tracking' for two quite different purposes, which is a mistake and the source confusion.

 - A "remote-tracking branch" is "a _thing_ whose purpose is to be used to
   track a branch on the remote side", and "fetch" is how you update it.

 - Sometimes people call a local branch whose purpose is to be used to
   build on efforts made on a branch on a remote repository as "tracking",
   which is quite incompatible with the above one.