Re: A generalization of git blame

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Sep 27, 2012, 06:38 UTC
Message-ID: <7vobksrmwh.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <a71b0f99366188f023e5bc8a5f704184.squirrel@webmail.cs.wisc.edu>

xmeng@cs.wisc.edu writes:

Show 9 quoted lines

>> It largely depends on how the user would interact with your program,
>> which is totally unclear as we haven't seen any part of it.  I do
>> not think we have enough information to answer the question at this
>> point.
>
> Do you mean it largely depends on the diversity of options on input and
> output formats? ...
> ... I know this is not enough for a tool. So this is case, does "how the user
> would interact with your program" mean that I should add ...

I am not saying anything about what you should or should not do. It is your program, and we haven't seen anything about it, other than handwaving, what good it will do to its users, so I am not qualified to make such a comment on it yet. What I meant by "how the users would interact with..." are things like this:

 - Why users would want to use it in the first place?  What are
   missing from existing tool set?

 - What kind of questions do users ask to the program and how do
   they ask them?

 - How are the answers to these questions presented by the program
   to the users?

 - How do users interpret and use these answers in what way?

Notice that I didn't include "How do you compute the answers?" When we are initially evaluating a feature at "how do they interact" level, we are not interested in the implementation at all.