Re: [DRAFT] Branching and merging with git

From: Sean <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
Date: Nov 17, 2006, 15:57 UTC
Message-ID: <BAYC1-PASMTP07C8A8D8E5E78173953CA9AEE80@CEZ.ICE>
In-Reply-To: <20061117153246.GA20065@thunk.org>

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:32:46 -0500 Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> It would be nice if there was an easy way to direct users through the
> documentation in a way which makes good pedagogical sense.  Right now,
> one of the reasons why life gets hard for new users is that the
> current tutorials aren't enough for them to really undersatnd what's
> going on at a conceptual level.  And if users start using "everyday
> git" as a crutch, without the right background concepts, the human
> brain naturally tries to intuit what's happening in the background,
> but without reading the background docs, git is different enough that
> they will probably get it wrong, which means more stuff that they have
> to unlearn later.

It would be nice to post this information on the Git website and not have it overshadowed by Cogito examples with paragraphs explaining how Cogito makes things easier. The current website distracts users away from learning Git or ever reading about this kind of information. Maybe we can pass a hat around for some funds for a separate Cogito website. ;o)

Show 5 quoted lines

> Maybe we should change git so that a "Fetch: " line in the remotes
> file works the same way as "Pull: ", and then recommend that people
> use "Fetch: " in order to reduce confusion, as opposed to simply
> explaining it away as "yet another example of the histororical
> fetch/pull confusion"?

 
That's quite a good idea.  The name was fixed when the option to move
this info into the config file was added (remote.<name>.fetch).  So
another option would be to show new users the config file method and
just damn the remotes file to a historical footnote.