Git User's Survey 2007 unfinished summary (long)
- From
Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
- Date
- Oct 4, 2007, 09:12 UTC
- Message-ID
- <8fe92b430710040212u332bb4e5yfa6c10b8236c6301@mail.gmail.com>
This is partial summary of Git User's Survey 2007, ending at state from 28 September 2007.
The survey can be found here: http://www.survey.net.nz/survey.php?94e135ff41e871a1ea5bcda3ee1856d9 http://tinyurl.com/26774s
---- There were 683 individual responses
About you ~~~~~~~~~
01. What country are you in?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Algeria | 1 Argentina | 3 Australia | 25 Austria | 9 Belgium | 5 Brazil | 20 Bulgaria | 1 Canada | 44 Chile | 2 China | 4 Colombia | 2 Czech Republic | 10 Denmark | 7 Ecuador | 1 Estonia | 1 European Union | 1 Finland | 23 France | 36 Germany | 64 Greece | 3 Hungary | 2 India | 13 Ireland | 2 Israel | 6 Italy | 14 Japan | 4 Jersey | 1 Latvia | 1 Malaysia | 1 Mexico | 1 Netherlands | 15 New Zealand | 5 Norway | 14 Philippines | 3 Poland | 6 Portugal | 2 Puerto Rico | 1 Romania | 1 Russian Federation | 6 Samoa | 1 Serbia | 1 Singapore | 2 Slovak Republic | 1 Slovenia | 2 South Africa | 4 Spain | 11 Sri Lanka | 1 Sweden | 14 Switzerland | 15 UK / US | 1 United Kingdom | 40 United States of America | 218 Venezuela | 1 Vietnam | 1 ------------------------------------------ Base | 673 / 683 Total (sum) | 673
England and Scotland counts as United Kingdom here. Table is sorted in alphabetical order.
As one can easily see, slightly less than third of GIT users are in the USA (those who answered this survey).
02. What is your preferred non-programming language?
This is multiple answers question, although most people gave only one preferred language.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Afrikaans | 1 Bulgarian | 1 Castellano | 2 Catalan | 1 Chinese | 2 Czech | 10 Danish | 6 Dutch | 12 English | 416 Finnish | 16 French | 33 Galician | 1 German | 58 Greek | 2 Hebrew | 1 HibernoEnglish | 1 Hungarian | 3 Italian | 9 Japanese | 1 LSF (French sign language) | 1 Norwegian | 4 Polish | 5 Portuguese | 11 Romanian | 1 Russian | 13 Serbian | 1 Slovenian | 2 Spanish | 13 Swedish | 13 Swiss | 1 Ukrainian | 1 Vietnamese | 1 ------------------------------------------ invalid (computer language) | 37 not understood | 4 ------------------------------------------ Base | 662 / 683 Total (sum) | 684
The question itself is not well formulated, as one can see from the number of answers with computer language, and "not understood" answers. I am not native English speaker, but there were suggestions to use "natural language" instead of "non-programming language".
Around two third of git users prefer English language, at least for dealing with computers.
03. How old are you?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ < 18 | 11 18-21 | 75 22-25 | 174 26-30 | 203 31-40 | 146 41-50 | 45 51-75 | 13 76+ | 0 ------------------------------------------ Base | 667 / 683 Total (sum) | 667
Youngest git user who answered this survey is 14 years old, oldest is 74 years old. This is quite a span, I'd say, The age of 25 got most count (51 answers).
04. Which programming languages you are proficient with?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ C | 582 shell | 449 Perl | 244 Python | 316 Tcl/Tk | 26 ------------------------------------------ Base | 648 / 683 Total (sum) | 1617
The choices include programming languages used by git. This is multiple choice question (you can be proficient in more than one programming language).
It look like there is only around 3/4 people proficient in Perl as compared to Python; it looks like Python is more popular. C is most popular; shell is more popular than Perl or Python. The fewest people are proficient in Tcl/Tk. I'm sorry, git-gui and gitk guys; it looks like not many developers... around 4% of git users.
Getting started with GIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
05. How did you hear about GIT?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ LKML | 109 LWN (Linux Weekly News) | 39 KernelTrap | 15 KernelTraffic | 1 kernel.org | 9 freedesktop.org | 5 Linus presentation at Google | 48 Slashdot | 28 blog | 19 community site[*1*] | 12 news site | 34
searching Internet[*2*] | 6 other SCM / SCM research[*3*] | 20 Internet | 32 IRC | 6
Linux kernel uses it | 73 some project uses git | 47
developer by name[*4*] | 21 friend | 39 word of mouth | 15 work / coworker | 22
initial GIT announcement | 12 BitKeeper news | 24 ------------------------------------------ don't remember | 13 other / uncategorized | 44 ------------------------------------------ Base | 658 / 683 Total (sum) | 693
[*1*] Community site are sites like Digg, Reddit and "planet" sites.
[*2*] This includes answer of "Google"
[*3*] This includes some other SCM mailing list, VCS comparison,
and searching for an SCM.
[*4*] Linus Torvalds, Carl Worth, Keith Packard, Randal Schwartz,...This was free-form question, and tabularizing answers was quite a work. It is taken as multiple choice question (for example link to Linus presentation at Google found at Slashdot).
Other / uncategorized includes for example GoogleTalk IM, 3 answers IIRC.
Note that Linus Torvalds presentation at Google / YouTube got it's own category, and generated quite a bit of git users.
06. Did you find GIT easy to learn?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ very easy | 38 easy | 136 reasonably | 318 hard | 131 very hard | 33 ------------------------------------------ Base | 656 / 683 Total (sum) | 656
Nice gaussian curve. Most users find it reasonably easy to use. On the other hand git is not considered easy...
07. What helped you most in learning to use it?
TO DO 646 / 683 non-empty responses
08. What did you find hardest?
TO DO 596 / 683 non-empty responses
09. When did you start using git? From which version?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ (no version string) | 165 0.99x | 26 0.x | 12 1.0x | 31 1.1x | 9 1.2x | 12 1.3x | 22 1.4x | 147 1.5x | 198 ------------------------------------------ Base | 626 / 683 Total (sum) | 626
NOTE! This table shows _only_ answers in which there was given git version explicitely. Some people gave date, some people wrote how long they have used git. Those answers needs also processing; they are skipped here.
It looks like the git users community is divided into part of users who started using it from beginning, or almost from beginning, and users which started using git post v1.3.0 (post e.g. making separate remotes the default layout of branches).
Other SCMs ~~~~~~~~~~
10. What other SCMs did/do you use?
This question is not well thought, as it gathers together (in the free-form which is not easy to tabularize with large number of responses we got) SCMs which one used and no longer uses, SCMs which are used in parallel with git, and SCMs which are used instead of git (which are chosen as main SCM for a project). Nevertheless it shows with which VCS, and its conceps, are users familiar with.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ AccuRev | 3 Aegis | 1 Bazaar | 19 Bazaar-NG | 50 BitKeeper | 27 CCC | 1 CMS (Digital) | 1 CMS (VAX) | 1 CMS (VMS) | 1 CVCS | 1 CVS | 454 ClearCase | 43 CodeMgr | 1 Continuus | 1 Darcs | 78 DesignSync | 1 GNU Arch | 57 Mercurial | 92 Monotone | 31 Omniworks | 1 OpenCM | 1 PRCS | 1 PVCS | 12 Perforce | 50 Quilt | 2 RCS | 61 SCCS | 18 SCM | 1 SCSS | 1 SVK | 19 Serena Version Manager | 1 SourceForge | 1 Sourcerer's Apprentice | 1 StarTeam | 4 Subversion | 524 Sun NSE | 2 Sun TeamWare | 4 VCS | 1 VMS | 1 VSS | 26 'cp -a' | 1 akpm patch scripts | 1 custom in-house tools | 1 diff patch | 2 none | 9 notes-on-paper-made-by-hand | 1 really horrible stuff | 1 scripts for 'shadow trees' | 1 tarballs | 1 tlib | 1 undisclosed | 1 ------------------------------------------ Base | 654 / 683 Total (sum) | 1615
The above table is in alphabetical order. It was generated from free-form answers, tabularized as multiple choice answer.
Note that this question does not distinguish between SCMs/VCSs which were used prior to Git and used no longer, SCMs which are used beside (in parallel) to Git perhaps interacting with Git, and SCMs which are used instead of Git. Also note that this is _Git User's_ survey, so it those number for example do not represent number of e.g. users of Mercurial as compared to e.g. users of Subversion.
Below there is table of SCM used, sorted by the number of responses. Note that annotations (like "a little CVS") were not weighted here. Only SCMs which has count more that 10 are shown. One person can (and usually did) chose more than one SCM.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Subversion | 524 CVS | 454 Mercurial | 92 Darcs | 78 RCS | 61 GNU Arch | 57 Bazaar-NG | 50 Perforce | 50 ClearCase | 43 Monotone | 31 BitKeeper | 27 VSS (MS Visual SourceSafe) | 26 Bazaar | 19 SVK | 19 SCCS | 18 PVCS | 12
tla+baz+bzr | 129 ------------------------------------------ Base | 654 / 683
As you can see two most popular SCMs are Subversion ('svn') and CVS, with Subversion being a bit more popular. Among distributed SCMs with most count are Mercurial ('hg') and Arch and its descendants ('tla', 'baz', 'bzr'). From proprietary (non-OSS) revision control systems Perforce ('p4'), ClearCase (and ClearCase UCM), BitKeeper ('bk') and Visual SourceSafe (aka. that awful M$ one ;-) got most count.
Note that the count for given version control system does not reflect _preferences_ of git users. One can be forced to use specified SCM.
See also question 35: "How does GIT compare to other SCM?".
11. Why did you choose GIT?
TO DO 643 / 683 non-empty responses
12. Why did you choose other SCMs?
TO DO 606 / 683 non-empty responses
13. What would you require from GIT to enable you to change,
if you use other SCM for your project?TO DO 474 / 683 non-empty responses
14. Did you import your repository from foreign SCM? What SCM?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ N/A | 15 No | 169 Yes | 372 ------------------------------------------ Base | 556 / 683 Total (sum) | 556
This is anly partial analysis, as it deals only with first part of question (which, because of second part, has free-form structure and needed processing).
One can see that around half of git users have imported (at least one project) from foreign SCM.
15. What tool did you use for import?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ by hand | 7 custom script | 21 fast-import script | 3
Tailor | 28 ------------------------------------------- git-cvsimport | 81 parsecvs | 12 fromcvs | 2 cvs2git | 1 cvstogit | 1
git-svn | 150 git-svnimport | 66
git-archimport | 15 bk2git (customized) | 1 darcs2git | 4 git-p4 | 4 git-p4import | 1 git-ucmimport | 1 hg-to-git | 2 hg2git | 2 hgpullsvn | 1 hgsvn | 1 moin2git | 1 ------------------------------------------ unspecified | 18 N/A | 114 ------------------------------------------ Base | 467 / 683 Total (sum) | 538
16. Do your GIT repository interact with other SCM? Which SCM?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ N/A | 35 No | 228 Yes | 228 ------------------------------------------ Base | 491 / 683 Total (sum) | 491
This is anly partial analysis, as it deals only with first part of question (which, because of second part, has free-form structure and needed processing).
One can see that around third of git users interacts (for at least one project) with foreign SCM, as compared to half of git users which have imported other SCM.
17. What tool did/do you use to interact?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ by hand | 10 custom script | 16
Tailor | 4 convert-repo | 1
fromcvs | 1 git-cvsexportcommit | 8 git-cvsimport | 19 git-cvsserver | 2
git-svn | 164 git-svnimport | 2
git-p4 | 4 git-p4import | 1 ----------------------------------------- unspecified | 2 N/A | 153 ------------------------------------------ Base | 385 / 683 Total (sum) | 388
The only tool which really allows to interact (two-way) with other SCM is git-svn (164 / 232).
How you use GIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
18. Do you use GIT for work, unpaid projects, or both?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ work | 56 unpaid projects | 212 both | 377
work + both | 433 ------------------------------------------ Base | 645 / 683 Total (sum) | 645
Around two third of people use git at work, or for work.
See also question 55: "Would commerical (paid) support from a support vendor be of interest to you/your organization?"
19. How do you obtain GIT?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ binary package | 283 source tarball | 210 pull from main repository | 153 ------------------------------------------ Base | 646 / 683 Total (sum) | 646
Around half more people use binary packages than source tarball (or source package, I think). More than half of people compile its own git (pull is also followed by compilation).
In earlier partial survey summary, from 27-08-2004 (a month earlier) there were twice as many people installing git from binary packages.
20. What hardware platforms do you use GIT on?
(on Unices: result of "uname -i")Note: 'uname -i' does not work on all Unices. I'm sorry for this mistake.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Intel | 73 Athlon | 2 i386 | 171 i586 | 9 i686 | 60 IA-32 | 6 IA-64 | 8 AMD | 35 amd64 | 48 x86 | 156 x86-64 | 112
Apple | 8 iMac | 1 MacBook | 7 PowerBook | 10 PPC | 52 ppc64 | 7
ARM | 6 Alpha | 2 PA-RISC | 1 parisc64 | 1 MIPS | 1 mips64 | 1 mipsel | 2 SPARC | 8 sparc64 | 6 SUNW | 6 Sun-Fire | 4 sun4u | 3 sun4v | 1 k8 | 1 ------------------------------------------ unknown | 67 ------------------------------------------ Base | 637 / 683 Total (sum) | 875
The above table is in some arbitrary order. It was generated from free-form answers, tabularized as multiple choice answer, as one person can use git on more than one architecture.
Those results probably needs further processing to reduce number of choices, by gathering architectures.
"Unknown" usually means that something else instead of architecture was given (like operating system), or architecture was too generic, like "PC".
21. What OS (please include the version) do you use GIT on?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ AIX | 1 FreeBSD | 16 OpenBSD | 3 HP-UX | 1 Linux | 582 MS Windows (Cygwin) | 22 MS Windows (msys) | 1 MS Windows (unsp.) | 35 MacOS X / Darwin | 94 Solaris | 11 SunOS | 5 UNIX (unsp.) | 1 too many to list | 1 ------------------------------------------ MS Windows (together) | 58 FreeBSD / OpenBSD | 19 Unices (together) | 19 ------------------------------------------ Base | 645 / 683 Total (sum) | 775
The above was generated from free-form answers, tabularized as multiple choice answer, as one person can use git on more than one operating system.
This is only rough analysis, because it does not include operating system version, or for Linux distribution(s) used.
22. What projects do you track (or download) using GIT (or git web interface)?
TO TABULARIZE 560 / 683 non-empty responses
23. How many people do you collaborate with using GIT?
TO TABULARIZE 575 / 683 non-empty responses
What ranges should be used here: 1, 2-9, 10-99, 100-999, 1000+ or perhaps 1, 2-5, 6-15, 16-25, 26-50, 50-100, 100-1000, 1000+, or yet another?
24. How big are the repositories that you work on?
TO DO 525 / 683 non-empty responses
Some git repositories have more than 50k files, more than 150k commits, more than 100mb largest file (although not single directory has all those).
25. How many different projects do you manage using GIT?
TO TABULARIZE 577 / 683 non-empty responses
26. Which porcelains do you use?
Multiple answers (one can use more than one porcelain).
Answer (multiple choice) | Count ------------------------------------------ core-git | 558 cogito (deprecated) | 56
Patch management interface: : 57 ........................................... StGIT | 41 Guilt (formerly gq) | 13 pg (deprecated) | 3
own scripts | 95 other | 14 ------------------------------------------ Base | 593 / 683 Total (sum) | 780
Those 14 "other" answers make me wish to have provided "if other, what it was?" (sub)question; actually not only for this question.
It is understandable that Cogito still has some users, even though it is deprecated, and [I think] all of its functionality can be found in git-core porcelain. It was meant as SCM / porcelain layer when git-core didn't have it and consisted almost only of plumbing commands.
Quite a bit of people use patch management interface: StGIT, Guilt, even deprecated and abandoned pg (Patchy Git). StGIT has more users than Guilt (formerly gq), although that might be caused by the fact that StGIT was here longer... Some say that it is because of Guilt having non-standalone documentation; it needs reading hgbook, as Guilt concepts are based on mq (Mercurial [patch] queues) extension.
Large number of users use their own scripts, more than any non-standard porcelain. One wonders if this is a result of good git scriptability.
14 users choose other... and there is no "what other" question, unfortunately...
If you are reading this: what were those other porcelains?
27. Which git GUI do you use?
Multiple answers (one can use more than one GUI). Note that for the first week and a bit of survey "CLI" answer had no explanation that it means command line interface, so results might be bit skewed.
Answer (multiple choice) | Count ------------------------------------------ CLI (command line) | 398 gitk | 347 git-gui | 123 qgit | 82 gitview | 15 giggle | 48 tig | 41 instaweb | 16 (h)gct | 3 qct | 3 KGit | 6 git.el | 31 other | 15
giggle + gitview | 63 ------------------------------------------ Base | 572 / 683 Total (sum) | 1128
As one can see almost as many people use gitk as CLI. Most used GUI are gitk and git-gui, most probably because they are distributed with git, and because they are portable. QGit is also quite popular, although GTK+ viewers, namely giggle and gitview are also quite popular (note that there might be instances of users using both giggle and gitview). I am a bit suprised about popularity of Giggle, I'd say.
Tig (text-mode interface for git) and git.el (GIT mode for Emacs) are also quite popular.
I wonder what are those 15 other GUI. Why oh why there were no "What is this 'other GUI'?" question.
28. Which (main) git web interface do you use for your projects?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ gitweb | 382 cgit | 7 wit (Ruby) | 5 git-php | 1 other | 27 ------------------------------------------ Base | 422 / 683 Total (sum) | 422
Around two third (closer to 4/7) of git users use some kind of web interface for their projects.
Most use gitweb (which is distributed with git), 7 use cgit, 5 wit (Ruby), most probably projects sharing site with XMMS2, 1 git-php (I wonder who...), and there are 27 "other" answers, which I am most curious about. What are they?
Some answered "other" as "N/A" (meaning they do not use web interface) instead, what it is not obvious, not answering this question. The explanation that this is possible was added later during duration of survey.
29. How do you publish/propagate your changes?
Multiple choices, as one can use different methods for different projects, for example pushing to public repo for a project maintained, and sending patches via email to participate in third person project development.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ push | 456 pull | 220 format-patch + email | 172 pull request | 65 bundle | 13
other | 70 ------------------------------------------ Base | 589 / 683 Total (sum) | 996
Here "other" means just not listed workflow, although it would be also interesting to know details.
Most popular is push, I guess to public "publishing" repository (and/or probably to mirror repositories). It is twice as popular as next method, gathering more than 3/4 of users.
Pull was supposed to mean logging to public server and pulling changes from private repo, not pulling someone other changes. It is second most popular method.
Sending patches via email is two to three times as popular as sending pull request.
30. Does git.git repository include code produced by you?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 99 No | 512 ------------------------------------------ Base | 611 / 683 Total (sum) | 611
As it can be seen, only (or perhaps it is that many?) around a 6th to 7th of git users participate in its development by providing code.
Internationalization ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
31. Is translating GIT required for wider adoption?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 49 No | 383 Somewhat | 158 ------------------------------------------ Base | 590 / 683 Total (sum) | 590
More than half of responders doesn't think that translating GIT is required for wider adoption.
32. What do you need translated?
TO TABULARIZE 172 / 683 non-empty responses
33. For what language do you need translation for?
In alphabetic order, free-form question, treated as multiple choice.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Afrikaans | 1 Belorussian | 1 Chinese | 5 Dutch | 2 English[*1*] | 3 Filipino | 1 Finnish | 3 French | 21 German | 17 Greek | 1 Hebrew | 1 Hindi | 1 Hungarian | 1 Italian | 4 Japanese | 5 Mandarin | 1 Norwegian | 2 Polish | 2 Portuguese | 6 Russian | 6 Serbian | 2 Slovenian | 1 Spanish | 9 Swedish | 2 Tagalog | 1 Ukrainian | 1 ------------------------------------------ Base | 143 / 683 Total (sum) [*2*] | 100
[*1*] Git messages and documentation _is_ in English [*2*] Some answers were: "do not translate".
German and French are most popular. Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese + Mandarin and Japanese have count 5 or more.
What you think of GIT ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
34. Overall, how happy are you with GIT?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ unhappy | 13 not so happy | 36 happy | 179 very happy | 302 completely ecstatic | 112 ------------------------------------------ Base | 642 / 683 Total (sum) | 642
Nice, git users are mostly very happy with git. 13 grumpy users, hmmm...
35. How does GIT compare to other SCM tools you have used?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Better | 505 Equal (comparable) | 96 Worse | 30
N/A | 52 ------------------------------------------ Base | 631 / 683 Total (sum) | 631
Clearly Git is superior SCM! (In the minds of Git users at least) ;-) Seriously, one should take into consideration that those results are biased, because it is _Git User's_ Survey, and people usually choose SCM because they think it is best choice.
No answer (null answer) might mean that responder does not use and did not use other SCMs to compare, or at least think that he/she does not have sufficient basis for a comparison.
NOTE: I have to check if number of non-empty responses is calculated properly. I think it is, but I will make sure.
36. What do you like about using GIT?
TO DO 578 / 683 non-empty responses
No full analysis yet, and no count of answers, but it seems that the following are encountered most often (or at least those I remember best): * clean design * performance (speed) * size of repository * reliability, robustness, data integrity * flexibility, scriptable * command set, features (git-bisect) * history rewriting (amend, rebase, interactive rebase, reset) * history viewers, searching and browsing history * distributed nature, offline work, full history locally, "local commits" * easy and in-place branching * easy merging, includes renames detection * push/pull via ssh, pull via plain http -- no server needed * easy to install: few dependencies, portable, lightweight
37. What would you most like to see improved about GIT?
(features, bugs, plug-ins, documentation, ...)TO DO 512 / 683 non-empty responses
So many suggestions...
First, some of suggestions are actually implemented already, for example git development Changelog (present in the form of RelNotes), shallow clone support, submodules support. This means that new features are not very well announced (which was one of comments here, too).
Some of features and improvements mentioned:
* generic behavior:
- less chatter, clean distinction between success or fail
(it it was about git-pull, it is addressed already)
- better, more verbose error messages, with link to documentation
- diagnostic output in case of problems;
something like git-explain / git-state
- more universal undo / continue
- command line consistency, option consistency: getopt / gitopt
* documentation:
- unified, organized, searchable documentation
- The Git Book (c.f. cvs/svn/hgbook);
tutorial leading to advanced concepts like rebase, filter-branch,
grafts, submodules, gitattributes
- Git Cookbook / Git Recipies;
best practices document, usage scenarios, workflows used, HOWTO
- Git for Dummies (for people who haven't used SCM at all)
- more hooks and hook examples
- mid-level (script / plugin writer leve) docs
- git1line docs a la sed1line.txt
- "git <cmd> --help" returning one page of short command summary,
not manpage; "git help --all --summary" for all command with
oneline description
* other SCMs:
- cogito migration guide / tutorial (!)
- other SCM to git (concept, commands) cheat sheet
- git-bzr (and other SCMs) two-way integration
- git-svnserve: git functioning as Subversion server
* git-svn:
- automatic handling svn:externals using submodules and vice versa
- svnmerge and svk merge markers tracking/marking of merges
* more --interactive:
- git add --interactive in git-gui: allow to divide hunks
- git rebase -interactive: graphical interactive rebase in git-gui
- ncurses-based remote editing
* tools:
- better Emacs support; Vim plugin; IDE plugins (Eclipse, KDevelop,
IntelliJ IDEA,...)
- MS Windows explorer shell integration; filemanagers integration
(Nautilus, Konqueror)
- side by side diffs in gitweb, a la KDiff3/Meld/ediff etc.
* code:
- port scripts to C (builtinification)
- git library (libification)
- gitbox: single static, pre-packaged binary
* other:
- bisect dunno / skip / next
- partial checkout
- light working copies; multiple working copies per repo
- git-notes, to annotate commit messages
- push over sftp
- option to track empty directories
- option to track permissions and metainfo: ACL, EA, forks
- rebase and blame merge strategies
- merge / rebase into dirty tree
- resumable git-clone; faster and less CPU hungry git-clone
- checkout/merge/diff/hunk header handlers in distribution for
ChangeLog, XML, odf, jar and xul, po filesThis is only [large] excerpt, not a list of all requested features. As one can see tabularizing (dividing into categories) this data will be not an easy task.
38. If you want to see GIT more widely used, what do you think
we could do to make this happen?TO DO 459 / 683 non-empty responses
So many suggestions... One of the more striking (and funny):
* Big fat posters world-wide with Catherine Zeta-Jones stating how happy she is since she switched to git ;-)
She can actually write C-code.
* Offer Git stickers to put on laptops and such
Changes in GIT (since year ago, or since you started using it) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
39. Did you participate in previous Git User's Survey?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 51 No | 583 ------------------------------------------ Base | 634 / 683 Total (sum) | 634
51 people did out of 634 who answered this question, out of 115 (?) who did participate in the previous survey. Around half. Bit curious.
40. What improvements you wanted got implemented?
TO TABULARIZE 129 / 683 non-empty responses
41. What improvements you wanted didn't get implemented?
TO TABULARIZE 104 / 683 non-empty responses
42. How do you compare current version with version from year ago?
Should be: from year ago, or since you started using this. No responses (303 / 683) migh be caused by the fact that one do not use git for a year, so he/she doesn't know what git looked like year ago.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Better | 319 No changes | 60 Worse | 1 ------------------------------------------ Base | 380 / 683 Total (sum) | 380
Most think that git has improved. One user thinks that it is worse than year ago; I wonder why...
43. Which of the new features do you use?
Multiple choice; the list does not include all new features. Some new features are not visible at first glance, and one uses them without conscious choice.
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ git-gui | 103 blame improvements | 74 detached HEAD | 71 stash | 68 mergetool | 67 interactive rebase | 66 reflog | 54 submodules | 52 shallow clone | 31 commit template | 24 eol conversion | 22 gitattributes | 21 bundle | 17 worktree | 17 ------------------------------------------ Base | 259 / 683 Total (sum) | 687
This table is sorted by count.
Detached HEAD support and stash command were long requested; no wonder they are popular.
Documentation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Usefulness of | Yes / Some / No | Base
----------------------------------------------
GIT wiki | 191 / 69 / 198 | 458
on-line help | 377 / 172 / 28 | 577
distributed help | 425 / 154 / 22 | 601
----------------------------------------------
individual responses : 68344. Do you use the GIT wiki?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 316 No | 300 ------------------------------------------ Base | 616 / 683 Total (sum) | 616
45. Do you find GIT wiki useful?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 191 No | 69 Somewhat | 198 ------------------------------------------ Base | 458 / 683 Total (sum) | 458
46. Do you contribute to GIT wiki?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 17 No | 460 Corrections and removing spam | 45
Some contribution | 62 ------------------------------------------ Base | 522 / 683 Total (sum) | 522
47. Do you find GIT's on-line help (homepage, documentation) useful?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 377 No | 28 Somewhat | 172 ------------------------------------------ Base | 577 / 683 Total (sum) | 577
48. Do you find help distributed with GIT useful
(manpages, manual, tutorial, HOWTO, release notes)?Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 425 No | 22 Somewhat | 154 ------------------------------------------ Base | 601 / 683 Total (sum) | 601
49. Did/Do you contribute to GIT documentation?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 43 No | 551 ------------------------------------------ Base | 594 / 683 Total (sum) | 594
50. What could be improved on the GIT homepage?
TO DO 171 / 683 non-empty responses
51. What topics would you like to have on GIT wiki?
TO DO 134 / 683 non-empty responses
52. What could be improved in GIT documentation?
TO DO 190 / 683 non-empty responses
Getting help, staying in touch ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Do you use | Yes / No | Base ---------------------------------------------- GIT wiki | 316 / 300 | 616 mailing list | 204 / 406 | 610 IRC channel | 182 / 376 | 558 ----------------------------------------------
Usefulness of | Yes / Some / No | Base
----------------------------------------------
GIT wiki | 191 / 69 / 198 | 458
mailing list | 146 / 79 / 34 | 259
IRC channel | 127 / 59 / 26 | 212
----------------------------------------------
individual responses : 683As one can see mailing list is the primary medium for git, and IRC secondary one.
53. Have you tried to get GIT help from other people?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 357 No | 261 ------------------------------------------ Base | 618 / 683 Total (sum) | 618
It might be that Git is not documented enough; it might be that version control is not an easy task.
54. If yes, did you get these problems resolved quickly
and to your liking?Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 326 No | 53 ------------------------------------------ Base | 379 / 683 Total (sum) | 379
That is I think very good (around 86%) percentage.
55. Would commerical (paid) support from a support vendor
be of interest to you/your organization?Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Not Applicable | 203 Yes | 69 No | 322
Yes + No | 391 ------------------------------------------ Base | 594 / 683 Total (sum) | 594
Only 69 (12%) answers yes, 322 no, 203 not applicable (which meant to encompass people who do not use git at and for work).
433 = 56 + 377 people participating in this survey use git for work, or for both work and unpaid projects (as compared to 391 who answered this question not with N/A).
Note that Git is GPLv2, and it will probably stay that forever, so you are _free_ to start a commercial support scheme for Git, but others are free not to choose it. This question is to get to know if there is sufficient demand for commercial Git support for it to be viable.
56. Do you read the mailing list?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 204 No | 406 ------------------------------------------ Base | 610 / 683 Total (sum) | 610
The fact that only one third of git users are reading mailing list (which is nevertheless quite large percentage) means that features _have_ to be documented somewhere besides mailing list archive and logs (commit messages).
57. If yes, do you find the mailing list useful?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 146 No | 34 Somewhat | 79 ------------------------------------------ Base | 259 / 683 Total (sum) | 259
58. Do you find traffic levels on GIT mailing list OK?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 193 No | 50 ------------------------------------------ Base | 243 / 683 Total (sum) | 243
59. Do you use the IRC channel (#git on irc.freenode.net)?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 182 No | 376 ------------------------------------------ Base | 558 / 683 Total (sum) | 558
60. If yes, do you find IRC channel useful?
Answer | Count ------------------------------------------ Yes | 127 No | 26 Somewhat | 59 ------------------------------------------ Base | 212 / 683 Total (sum) | 212
61. Did you have problems getting GIT help on mailing list
or on IRC channel? What were it? What could be improved?TO TABULARIZE 99 / 683 non-empty responses
Open forum ~~~~~~~~~~
62. What other comments or suggestions do you have, that are not
covered by the questions above?TO DO 141 / 683 non-empty responses
-- Jakub Narebski