From: Junio C Hamano Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:45:59 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 03/15] user-manual: Use 'remote add' to setup push URLs Message-ID: <7vsj53rdnc.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: <20130210215442.GB8000@odin.tremily.us> "W. Trevor King" writes: > On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 01:33:31PM -0800, Junio C Hamano wrote: >> Look at how "Fetching branches from other repositories" is done. It >> shows the use of "remote add" and then shows the result by running >> "cat" to show the contents. >> >> I think that organization is much nicer than completely hiding how >> the result looks like behind another "git config --set" call, like >> the latter half of this patch does. > > I think for new users, `git config …`'s opacity may a good thing No. Reducing the fear factor from new users by not hiding simple things is one of the design of these tutorials, and showing that the contents of .git/config is a simple, human-readable plain text file is a part of it. > I'm fine with this too, but if this is the suggested route, why bother > with `git config` at all? Is it just for ease of scripting? I would actually say why bother with `git remote` at all, when you can do that with `git config`, but arguably when a Porcelain that is type-specific exists, use of it would make the life of end users easier, and that is why we ended up having `git remote add`. So if you know how the remote configuration is implemented, you can still use `config` to do the same, but `remote add` that futzes with many variables at once would be easier to use for most people.