From: Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2011 12:51:57 GMT
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2] revert: Implement --abort processing
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=gYSJgG-Yu-+-5wPetpb0-AW=X+g@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <20110612122145.GA20495@elie>

Hi again,

Jonathan Nieder writes:
> Would this person expect:
>
>  - that "git diff --cached" would return a pile of changes
>  - that "git reset --keep", "git reset --merge", "git checkout",
>   "git merge", and various other commands would refuse to do much,
>   for fear of clobbering the new "local changes"
>  - that the worktree would be unchanged
>  - etc
>
> Would they be happy about it?  Just put yourself in their shoes.  A
> soft reset is near the most intrusive behavior possible.

Okay, it sounds pretty terrible when you put it like that :p

> And that is a good way to think about the UI for any new facility.  If
> you disregard about how flexible it is in abstract, how easy to
> implement, how elegant-sounding and just think about a person using it
> will find her quality of life improved or worsened, that is (1) a good
> sanity-check on a design and (2) basically the only way to explain it
> to other people.

Frankly, I'm still trying to understand how other people work -- I
don't use the porcelain much, and I dislike anything but the most
minimalistic automation.  I didn't even like the change to cherry-pick
where you can simply "git commit" after resolving a conflict; I still
prefer and use the more explicit "git commit -c" after removing the
CHERRY_PICK_HEAD.  Also, I *always* use rebase with --onto, because I
explicitly want to know how many commits I'm picking, and I often
don't remember if I've rewritten the ref I'm rebasing onto.  While
rebasing, I use reset --hard a lot, because it's a very effective and
well-understood hammer; I then cherry-pick the refs I want from the
reflog.  I don't know how others work; I think I'm completely confused
about UI because I'm trying to mix my personal tastes, historical
conventions, and suggestions from others.
</rant>

Long story short: I'm hopeless at UI design. I'll think about the
sequencer UI from a fresh perspective again, and hopefully post
something sensible soon.

-- Ram